


Without Having To Say

by momebie (katilara)



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-06
Updated: 2016-02-06
Packaged: 2018-05-18 15:53:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 24,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5934100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katilara/pseuds/momebie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Yeah? Which was the big guy downstairs? Because my good Catholic upbringing didn’t make the distinction.”</p><p>Out of nervous habit, Ronan brings his wrist up to his mouth and chews on the leather bands there. He’s been wearing them and chewing on them since he was sixteen. It’s a wonder there’s anything left to them at all. He feels the same way about his good Catholic upbringing.</p><p>“I think,” Adam says, quiet now. “That he wasn’t very nice, but that he wasn’t ever given a reason to be. I think it was self-defense.” It’s an explanation that sounds both close to home and far away. He looks up and out the window. His gaze gets caught there, distracted for the first time since they started.</p><p>Ronan looks as well, but it’s dark out now and all he can see is the shadow box reflection of the room against the black behind. Set against the rest of it, Adam’s hunched over reflection looks small and dark. Ronan is little more than a few swaths of stark negative space cut against the white glow. Neither of them has a halo.</p><p>(Or, that one where Adam is an art major and Ronan agrees to model for a sculpture of Satan.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The Sculptor AU! This is incredibly self-indulgent and all of the conflict is internal, but maybe some of the words are pretty enough to make up for it?
> 
> The title is taken from Stars' 'What I'm Trying To Say', [The Dears' cover of which](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZQXp2yn0Jg) is the unofficial theme song for the fic.
> 
> All Latin translation is courtesy of [@polytropia](http://polytropia.tumblr.com/) and is canon-typical in its inaccuracies. 
> 
> Adam's form of sculpture looks something like work by [Claire Morgan](http://www.claire-morgan.co.uk/2014\(2958125\).htm) and certain things set up by [Studio Drift](http://www.studiodrift.com/work).

Ronan wipes his hand across the bathroom mirror, clearing the condensation off a small strip of glass. He glares at his reflection, searching it for some indication that he’s the same as he’s always been. Ice blue eyes peer disdainfully back at him from beneath angry dark eyebrows. He’s felt tetherless lately, caught adrift between sleep and wakefulness, never fully either. He thinks it has to do with the realization skulking somewhere near the back of his thoughts that he might actually have a future. In high school he’d rarely spared any thought for the next week, let alone the next year. 

He stopped doing things that might kill him—mostly for Gansey’s sake—but that doesn’t mean he really thought he’d survive either. Something about his upcoming finals and the discussions his classmates are having about internships makes the future seem inevitable and heavy. Less like a distant possibility, more like a dream of its own.

Sometimes the only way he knows he’s not dreaming is that he’s bored. The monotony of the real world is very rarely broken up by monsters with claws. It used to be that it was rarely broken up by monsters with claws and small girls in skull caps, but since leaving his all boys boarding school for a state university, girls with skull caps have become a regular fixture in the setting. Especially now that they’re so close to winter. Some of them even look at him curiously from behind trees. It’s a strange sort of deja vu when it happens. 

The waking world is weird. The sleeping world is weird. Ronan feels like he doesn’t fully belong in either anymore. 

He angrily brushes his teeth while staring himself down. The older he gets the more he looks like his father and he’s not sure he can really trust his reflection not to hurt him anymore. He decides it’s bullshit, just like everything else, and spits into the sink. Then he throws open the door and strides into the living room in a puff of steam wearing nothing but a towel tied low around his hips. 

Gansey is sitting on the floor between the couch and the coffee table and using the student paper as a plate for a slice of cold pizza. 

“And people assume I’m the gross one,” Ronan says. “You’re going to get ink poisoning.” 

He saunters to the kitchen and pulls the orange juice out of the fridge. He takes a swig of it from the bottle and grimaces at how it tastes on his just-brushed tongue. Then he notices Gansey’s pained look of disgust, so he shrugs and takes another gulp before screwing the cap on and placing it back on the shelf. He nudges the door closed with his hip. 

“You didn’t even enjoy that,” Gansey accuses. “You just did it to upset me.” 

“Worked, didn’t it?” 

Gansey rolls his eyes. “They’ve done studies on using newspaper for bedding on farms and the ink was not found to be toxic either through absorption or ingestion. I doubt this pizza will kill me.” He picks it up and looks at it. An olive topples off onto the paper. “Well, any more than it was going to.” 

“You’re no horse,” Ronan says. 

“You, on the other hand, are definitely pig headed.” 

Ronan walks around the couch on his way back to his room and reaches down to cuff Gansey on the back of his head as he goes by. “You going to campus early to moon over your barista today?” 

“I don’t moon,” Gansey insists. Ronan throws a skeptical look over his shoulder and Gansey dips his head. “Fine, I might moon. She’s just so...so...” 

“Small?” Ronan offers. “Angry? Volatile? Yippy like an excitable terrier?”

“Pretty,” Gansey says with a half sigh. 

“Gross.” Ronan scowls and turns back to his room. He makes it most of the way to his door before something bounces off his shoulder. He turns around to find a piece of Gansey’s newsprint plate balled up at his feet. “What the fuck?” 

“Someone took out a personal ad looking for you. Why don’t you answer it and stop giving me shit for my love life?” 

“You don’t have a love life,” Ronan says. He bends down to pick up the bit of paper and has to catch his towel before it slips. Gansey’s threatened to change the locks and not give Ronan a key if he has to see Ronan’s bare ass again before spring semester. Ronan figures he just might do it. “What you have is a self-righteous coffee slinger who continually writes creative almost-swears on your little paper cups.” 

“Sometimes there are hearts next to them.” 

“Don’t you have an honest to god hard copy of the Oxford English Dictionary around here? I’m pretty sure the word sarcasm is in it. You should look it up.” 

He smooths the paper as best as he can with one hand. It is a personal ad, separated from the rest of the rambling text by a box of thick black lines. It says:

> **WANTED—male model to pose for 3D sculpture of Satan after the fall. If you think you look like Satan, come by VAB 415 between 2 and 3:30 Wednesday.**

“Ha. Ha,” Ronan says. He balls the paper back up and tosses it at Gansey. It pings him right on the forehead and bounces off onto the floor.

“You keep trying to talk me into things by referring to yourself as _the devil I know_.” He brackets the last bit in air quotes which are entirely unnecessary, seeing as how Gansey has perfected the art of vocal air quotes. Oftentimes things he’s said are also vocally italicized and underlined for good measure. “Thought you might get an expert opinion.” 

“Right, because some goth chick working on her end of semester project in between shifts at the Hot Topic could be considered an expert on anything but pop punk bands.” 

“Maybe she’ll be cute,” Gansey says, grinning up at him smugly. 

Ronan, who knows Gansey knows he has absolutely no use for girls or their possible cuteness, turns on his heel and heads back to his room without dignifying that with a response.


	2. Chapter 2

The lights ticked off ten minutes ago. Adam is sitting as still as he can while he sketches, trying to keep them from ticking back on again. Mostly, he just likes the light this way. The mid-afternoon sun coming in through the large windows is diffused across the darkened studio space, making the white of his paper and the grey of his pencil line look more subdued. Also, he’s hoping that if the lights are off it will look like there’s no one in the room and discourage anymore would-be models from stopping in. 

He really shouldn’t have let Blue place the ad, but she’d insisted it would be easier to do the preliminary planning for his latest project with a person instead of trying to dig through stock photos of poses. When he reminded her that she was a person she’d just rolled her eyes and said, ‘ _a boy-sized person_.’

The problem, besides Blue trying to hook him up with every single person she meets who might be half interesting, is that the way she worded the ad had been horrid for finding dates and only passable for its supposed purpose. Yes, he actually was trying to capture something of the post-fall angelic, but what he was looking for in a model was not at all the sort of person who thought they were bad ass. Turns out, the average college guy has very little understanding of Satan. Or at least, Satan as Adam sees him, which is the only understanding that matters at present. Adam has had enough small talk with cocky assholes for the day.

He flicks his eyes up quickly and checks the clock hanging over the door. He’s got fifteen minutes before he’s kicked out for the next student’s set of appointments. He’s already planning the best way to hold this failure over Blue when, to his annoyance, the door opens. Adam doesn’t acknowledge it, hoping the person will turn and go if he seems disinterested enough. 

After a minute the feeling of being watched starts to wear on him. He sighs and gives in. “Are you going to come in?”

Adam finishes the final line on his latest wing test sketch and looks up. For a split second the hallway light frames the stranger’s body in a way that makes him look haloed with a burnt orange aura. There’s something both daring and uncertain about the tense line of his shoulders where they’re caught between his outstretched arms, hands gripping both sides of the door frame as if resisting the pull of the room. Then the motion sensor catches Adam’s movement and the fluorescent bulbs tick on above him, washing the moment away with bright, caustic light.

The stranger holds Adam’s gaze. He looks caught out, wary. Finally, he shrugs and steps across the threshold. The door slams closed behind him and Adam’s heart jolts. The guy digs his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket. “Heard you were looking for the devil.” 

Adam gives him a tight smile, just the decent side of polite, and slides off his stool. He sets his pencil down on top of the sketch pad and leaves both behind as he approaches the guy.

In some ways this guy is just like the parade of guys Adam’s already looked at today: cocky, arrogant, draped in a thin veil of aggression. But somehow this one’s aggression seems more sincere. He’s not rough like the others, or casually uncouth. He holds himself in a way that suggests many people have tried to refine him and he's rebelled against every one of them. It's at least thematically appropriate. 

The guy is looking Adam over in a guarded way that suggests he doesn’t like being the center of attention. Or at least that he doesn’t like being held under such scrutiny. As if the guy’s afraid that what Adam unearths in his looking might not stand up to his expectations. 

When Adam started this project he honestly wasn’t sure any person could look like what he’s after, because essentially and somewhat embarrassingly, what he’s after is himself. Yet here it is, to a tee, as if the guy’s stepped out of his head, freshly exiled from paradise. Adam walks around him slowly, looking his fill because he needs to and because he can, because what there is to look at is so attractive. 

This guy—with his close shaved hair, thin lips, sharp stare, and expensive clothes—couldn’t be more unlike Adam if he was trying to be. But the bags under his eyes are very familiar to Adam from his own seemingly non-ending nights. He stands with a restless grace, the edges of him harsh, but muted, like someone’s playing with the color effect settings on the space around him, like he’s been cut out of some far grander world and been pasted here into the mundane one.

“Not bad,” he says. “You don’t work out, do you?” It seems rude to ask someone to take their shirt off within seconds of meeting them, but he has to make sure what he’s getting himself into will be useful to him. 

The guy scoffs as if this appraisal is worthless. It’s exactly what Adam would do if their roles were reversed. “I’ve been known to lift a keg or two on Tuesdays.” 

Adam laughs quietly in spite of himself. Of course he’s a jerk. Why wouldn’t he be, looking like he does? “Fair enough.” Adam stops in front of the guy and holds out his hand. “I’m Adam. You should probably know that if we’re going to be spending time together.”

“You’re shitting me,” the guy says. He pulls a hand from his jacket and takes Adam’s. The skin is soft, but the knuckles are scarred. The leather bands around his wrist are stretched and faded, not at all as expensive or well-kept as the rest of him. 

Interesting, Adam thinks. “Not today, I’m afraid.” 

“You just made my roommate’s day. I hope you’re proud of yourself.” 

“I don’t know your roommate, but I always take pride when my work elicits a reaction.” 

“Well,” the guy says, slow and sarcastic. “I’m Ronan and I guess I’ll be your downfall.” 

“Ronan,” Adam says. He looks Ronan straight in the eye and doesn’t back down from the bemused challenge there. He’s gripped with something like nerves. Usually he would let this warn him off a person, but he leans into it. For the art if nothing else. “I think I can live with that.”


	3. Chapter 3

“Are you nervous?” Gansey asks. 

He’s sitting across from Ronan at the small round table in the student bookstore, fidgeting. His knee hasn’t stopped bouncing in the ten minutes they’ve been there and he’s managed the rip the cardboard sleeve from his coffee cup into a long, perfect spiral. He keeps looking past Ronan to the coffee bar. All of this, and he has the nerve to ask Ronan if _he’s_ nervous. 

“The fuck would I have to be nervous about?”

“I seem to remember something about possibly cute Hot Topic employees.”

Ronan rolls his eyes. “I don’t think he works at Hot Topic. I didn’t ask.” 

“He.” Gansey says, drawing it out significantly. He gazes at Ronan steadily for the first time since they sat down. 

“Yeah.” Ronan gives him a grin that’s more teeth than feeling. “Guess I lucked out.” 

Gansey leans forward and drops his chin onto his open palm. “How lucky are we talking? On a scale of the Pig breaking down in the mountains to getting that favor from Glendower?” 

Ronan pretends to think. He looks up and then back over his shoulder, as if searching for the answer. The girl Gansey likes is staring at them with her hands on her hips and her lips pursed in thought. When she realizes he’s looking she makes a rude gesture and turns around with the flounciest spin ever to have no place to flounce off to. He bites down on a derisive laugh and turns back to the table. 

“Winning the lottery,” he says finally. 

Gansey blinks, genuinely confused. “Ronan, you’re already rich. How can winning the lottery be pegged as anything other than a mostly neutral four?”

“Exactly.” Ronan pushes his chair back and collects his binder from the table as he stands. “Any idiot can read eight hundred books in Welsh and find a tomb, but the lottery’s a one in a billion chance that some poor jerk is going to end up with more than he bargained for.” 

“Not any idiot,” Gansey mutters. He starts wrapping the cardboard spiral around his fingers.

“Uh huh,” Ronan says. It’s a sore subject that they haven’t found Gansey’s king yet, but Ronan believes in Gansey and Gansey believes in Glendower. Between the two of them something’s bound to manifest one of these days. Neither of them believes in luck that hasn’t been earned. “If you think you can manage to sit here and not get stabbed with a knife coated in cream cheese, I’m gonna go see some poor jerk.”

“I’ll do my best.” 

“That’s what I’m afraid of.” Ronan salutes Gansey with his middle finger and then turns away. “See what’s left of you at the diner later.”

Outside of the bookstore, the early evening air is cool and the campus is quiet. Both circumstances manage to ease some of the anxiousness he will never admit to Gansey that he has. This whole thing was funny two days ago, but now it’s just awkward. He doesn’t want to be stared at for god-knows-how-long while some strange guy does god-knows-what with the likeness of him, no matter how hot the guy is. And Adam is, he really, really is. But it's too late to back out now, and Ronan’s pride and curiosity are getting the better of him. 

He arrives in the lobby of the Visual Arts Building at 6:15 on the dot as promised and finds it empty. This is only the second time Ronan’s been in this building, so he wanders down the corridor, taking in the bits of student art hung from the ceilings and walls and installed along the floor. He turns a corner around a large red metal sculpture that looks like macaroni kama sutra and finds Adam tucked up under one of the arms with his legs crossed. He’s sketching in a notebook just like he was the first time Ronan saw him.

The light from the setting sun is coming in through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the hallway and painting everything in pinks and oranges. It makes the statue more garishly red and Adam a burnished gold. His skin and hair are glowing with it, and the brightness reflecting up at his face from the white of the paper casts him as otherworldly. Ronan thinks that perhaps their roles should be reversed. Surely this beautiful boy with his high cheekbones and graceful frame should be the cast off angel and Ronan should be the lowly human sculptor looking for a muse. 

As a boy Ronan’s mother told him about Pygmalion, the sculptor who’d fallen in love with his own creation. At first Ronan thought it was a romantic story. How marvelous to be able to pull beauty into being and have it not lose its shine. Since his father’s death and his mother’s subsequent state of sleep though, he’s come to see it as a warning. How tragic to breathe life into something if you can’t also give it a soul. Standing here in this moment he wonders if there’s not some sort of middle ground that can’t be worked out. If a pair of hands can’t manifest something desirous and sculpt that desire back into it. 

Not that it matters. Dreaming aside, Ronan’s talents don’t lie in his hands. His talents lie in obscure words and dead languages and a truly monumental inability to be able to convey his wants or needs in any of them.

He crosses his arms, scuffs his boot against the tile of the floor noisily, and laces his voice thick with annoyance. “I’ll just strip down right here, shall I?”

Adam jumps a little and jerks his head up. “Oh, sorry,” he says. He closes the sketchbook and shoves his things into the canvas satchel at his side. “I didn’t hear you come up. I’m not so good in my left ear.”

Ronan wants to ask why. He wants to ask many things. Instead he stands back, silent and judging, as Adam crawls out from under the sculpture and leads him down the hall to the elevator. This elevator does not creak and shudder like the one in the language building, which is a shame, because he wouldn’t mind an excuse to cling to Adam for his life.

Ronan didn’t get a good look at the studio space last time, but now he can see that it’s in the same loosely organized state of chaos that Gansey keeps in their living room. There are stacks of books and sketchbooks and canvases in every corner and half-finished projects in the spaces demarcated by colorful tape along the floor.

“A place for every disaster and every disaster in its place,” he mutters. He drops his binder on one of the high work tables. Then he shucks off his leather jacket and lays it over top. 

Adam deposits his bag in a square marked off in green on the floor and trades it for a large format sketchpad and a pencil bag. “That’s the glamour of an art major.”

He turns back to Ronan and pauses, looking at him in much the same way he had at their first meeting. It’s considering, heavy. Ronan feels the flush starting to work its way up his neck. He raises his arms and cracks his knuckles over his head, looking away.

“C’mon then,” Adam says. 

He makes his way to the back corner where there’s a mess of lights and cords. He drops his notebook and pencil case on the ground and pulls out one of the squat lights covered in a white rectangle of material. When he turns it on the light that comes from it is bright and hazy. 

“My friend’s working on a photography project and said I could borrow these.”

“Mood lighting?” Ronan smirks. “I usually ask for dinner before I get to third base.”

Adam rolls his eyes and tilts the light so that it casts its soft pool onto the floor. “Take your shirt off and come kneel here.” He traces an x in the middle of a tile with the toe of his shoe. It shows in the dust.

Ronan does as he’s told, tossing his sweater and undershirt over his jacket and kicking off his boots just to make himself comfortable. The tiles are cool under his socked feet, but the area beneath the light is warm. “How do you want me?”

The question seems to catch Adam off guard. He opens his mouth and then closes it again, like he’s not sure how he should answer. Finally he says, “just on your knees with your arms by your side. Any way you think you can hold it for a while.”

There’s a joke about being on his knees right at the tip of Ronan’s tongue, but it feels too easy so he lets it go. He crouches down as he’s told and tries not to put too much weight on where his knees are biting into the hard floor.

Adam sits a couple yards away with his legs crossed. He rolls up the sleeves on his flannel button up and opens the sketchbook to a blank page. He sits that way for several long moments, looking Ronan over and chewing on the end of his pencil. Just as Ronan’s starting to feel like he can’t take the scrutiny anymore Adam looks down and begins to draw. 

Ronan watches him, because he doesn’t have anything else to do. There’s something about being able to study Adam as Adam studies him that makes him feel less self-conscious. It’s not about his body. For all the hang ups Ronan has, that isn’t one of them. He knows what he looks like. He’s the sharp and jagged machine he’s been turning himself into since his father died. He’s the shard Declan snapped clean off the family shortly after. He’s the weapon that might keep him from being hurt like that again in the future. It’s worked so far.

No, it’s not about his outsides. His outsides are the joke he has with Gansey that is the reason he’s here to begin with. This is about the other him, the one left raw under the armor and the ink that so very few people get to see. He worries that the longer Adam looks at him, the more of his secrets and shames he’ll unearth. He worries that Adam can already see all of it.

On the page Adam’s done a rough outline of Ronan’s posture and is starting to work in the detail of his face. Ronan watches his eyes emerge in dark, fluid strokes from the pencil—him watching his drawn self watching Adam as he shades in his cheekbones severely. Something in Ronan’s chest compresses and makes it hard to breathe.

“So,” he says, filling the yawning gap of silence between them. “Tell me the truth. This is just an excuse to see guys half naked, isn’t it?”

Adam looks up at him, eyes narrowed, and then back down at his drawing. “It doesn’t hurt.”

Ronan swallows against his dry throat. He really expected more of a fight, because fight is what he would have done if some asshole said that to him. He doesn’t know what to do with the earnest casualness in Adam’s response. He tries again. “Could have just taken a photo I suppose.”

Adam erases the sharp point of Ronan’s chin and shrugs. “A photo wouldn’t give me the same feel for you.”

“Why not? I don’t know shit about art, but this seems less efficient. You still need to bang me out of the marble or whatever. You’re doing double the work.”

Adam looks up and puts the butt of the pencil in his mouth again, thinking. “You’re right.” He pauses. For a moment Ronan feels smug, but it’s only a moment. Adam follows it up with, “you don’t know shit. Art isn’t about efficiency, it’s about feeling, experiencing. I don’t want to merely recreate the slope of your shoulders. I want to translate what they’re saying about who you are, which frankly, a photograph won’t help with.”

“And what are they saying?” Ronan asks. “I hope it’s rated PG13 at least.”

“It’s possible they are telling me to fuck myself.”

Ronan shrugs. “That’s not personal. They say that to everyone.”

Adam hums in agreement and goes back to drawing. After several more silent minutes he says. “You’re not really all that dark, you know?”

“The fuck I’m not. Your ad specifically asked for someone who thought they looked like the devil.” What is he even doing here if Adam doesn’t agree with his self-assessment?

Adam laughs quietly. It’s little more than a shaking of his shoulders. “That was a compliment. Satan didn’t think himself dark either.”

“Are you insinuating that I’m secretly nice? I know we just met and all, but I can promise you, I am not nice.”

“No, you’re not. I figured that out in our first five minutes. But there’s a difference between not nice and evil.”

“Yeah? Which was the big guy downstairs? Because my good Catholic upbringing didn’t make the distinction.”

Out of nervous habit, Ronan brings his wrist up to his mouth and chews on the leather bands there. He’s been wearing them and chewing on them since he was sixteen. It’s a wonder there’s anything left to them at all. He feels the same way about his good Catholic upbringing.

“I think,” Adam says, quiet now. “That he wasn’t very nice, but that he wasn’t ever given a reason to be. I think it was self-defense.” It’s an explanation that sounds both close to home and far away. He looks up and out the window. His gaze gets caught there, distracted for the first time since they started.

Ronan looks as well, but it’s dark out now and all he can see is the shadow box reflection of the room against the black behind. Set against the rest of it, Adam’s hunched over reflection looks small and dark. Ronan is little more than a few swaths of stark negative space cut against the white glow. Neither of them has a halo.

Adam scrubs his hand over his face and puts the drawing on the floor next to him. He pulls his knees up to his chest and wraps his arms around them. “You must be uncomfortable. Let’s be done for the night. I can text you if I want to see you again.”

The difference between _want_ and the more expected _need_ snags on something in Ronan’s brain. He grunts his response and slides so that he’s sitting with his feet kicked out in front of him. 

His legs are mostly numb, but there’s no way he’s admitting that. The blood rushes back into them, followed by that pin prick feeling of returning to life. Adam busies himself with packing up. Ronan’s legs stop stinging just as Adam comes over to put the light away. He moves between it and Ronan, balancing himself with a light touch on Ronan’s shoulder as he steps over a cord between them.

Ronan looks down at Adam’s hand, with its slender, graceful fingers. He can’t imagine them holding a hammer and beating a figure roughly out of stone. They look like they were made for more intricate things than that. Adam himself is a whole other story, because Ronan can only think that a person has to be a work of art themselves in order to create works of art. Adam pulls away and turns around. The light clicks off. 

Ronan stands and wipes his hands on his jeans. “So, you think I’m stone worthy?”

Adam looks back at him, brow crumpled. “What?”

“The stone, for the sculpture. That shit can’t be cheap. Carving some asshole into it seems like an awfully cruel thing to do to posterity.”

“Oh!” Adam shakes his head. “No, that’s not the kind of sculpture I do.”

Ronan stares at him a bit dumbly. “How many other kinds are there?”

“Get dressed.”

Adam slips his bag over his shoulder and waits for Ronan by the door. Ronan puts his layers back on and follows him out. They take the stairwell down two flights. Adam pushes the squeaking door open and leads Ronan out onto the second story landing.

In this part of the building there’s open space above the entrance hallway up to the third floor, which means that from where they’re standing, they’re face to face with the midsection of an installation hanging from the ceiling above. At first all Ronan can process is the knotted curves and twists of the trunk and branches of a golden oak tree, swelling suspended in the air. It’s huge. Probably about the length of a car and eight feet tall. The root system writhes in the air like it’s trying for purchase in the missing soil. When Ronan looks at it more closely he sees that the whole thing is somehow composed of glittering beads knotted strategically onto the vertical lines of gold wire hanging delicately down. It’s like rain taking form. It’s like the forests in his dreams.

“Fuck,” he says. Of course. Of course Adam’s beautiful, agile hands can pull beautiful things through the very firmament of the world into existence. Ronan’s feeling a reverence for nature and creation that he’s been missing for a long time.

“Should I take that personally this time?” Adam asks. He’s studying Ronan again, curious eyes tracing every angle of him.

Ronan soaks in the gaze and feels it trickle through his chest, warm and thick. He can feel it recreating him. He can feel it pulling any latent beauty there might be in him to the surface, like Adam's unearthing his dreams. He wants Adam to unearth his dreams, he realizes. He wants to let every part of this boy slip beneath his armor. He wants to give the soft, raw parts of himself a chance to be shaped into things he can’t even begin to imagine for himself.

“Yes,” he says.

Adam frowns and grips the railing tighter. Ronan shakes his head. He reaches out and taps the back of Adam’s hand with his finger.

“You said you wanted to get a feel for what my separate parts say about me, to translate. I don’t know shit about art, but I know about translation. It’s always easier when you’re familiar with the source material.” 

“Are you hitting on me?” Adam asks. 

Ronan can’t tell if Adam’s pleased or annoyed. “Maybe.” 

The corner of Adam’s lip twitches. “Well, you have my number. Text me when you figure it out.” 

He adjusts the strap over his shoulder and tucks his hands into the pockets of his jeans as he turns to walk away. Ronan watches him go, memorizing the dip of his neck, the angle of his elbows where they’re pulled in tight by his sides, and the slight rock of his hips as he moves. No, Ronan’s talents don’t lie in his hands, but he has a sudden itch to create and breathe desire into this faded and golden boy all the same.


	4. Chapter 4

“You didn’t,” Blue says. 

She’s meticulously picking apart a piece of string cheese and laying the strands out in even rows along her plate. Adam has the distinct impression he’s being mocked, but he continues to do much the same thing with his thin strands of silver wire and not question her motives. He’s seen more than one man laid out in the gravel for questioning Blue’s motives. 

It’s been two days since Adam last saw Ronan. For the first day, waiting for the text was distracting. Today, very obviously not receiving the text is even more distracting. Whenever he plays the moment over in his head, which he does about every thirty seconds, he goes warm thinking about audacity of it. The earth hasn’t opened up and swallowed him whole to put him out of his misery yet, which just means that there is no justice in the world. 

“I don’t know what I was thinking.” He feels a bit like he’s whining, but he doesn’t care. If you can’t whine in front of your best friend, who can you whine in front of?

He’s just such an idiot. Of course Ronan, with his cool jacket and his expensive boots and his sharp angles, isn’t interested in a scholarship art nerd. Especially not a scholarship art nerd who’s never done more than kiss another guy. What was Adam even planning on doing if Ronan had said yes? Well, more than kiss him, he’s sure, but that would probably have just ended in embarrassment. Adam’s pride hasn’t gotten him in that much trouble since he and Blue tried dating in high school. It’s better this way, really. 

“Would you say the devil made you do it?” Blue asks, eyebrows raised in mock innocence. 

Adam grabs a handful of glittering black beads and throws them at her. They rain down on her plate and the coffee table with light plinking sounds. A few of them get caught in her hair. She tosses a piece of string cheese in retaliation. It gets caught on the shoulder of Adam’s sweater. He peels it off and looks over for fuzz before eating it. 

“How are things with your nemesis?” He says, trying to change the subject. 

“Ugh.” Blue rolls her eyes. “He’s still not cute enough to make up for his obnoxious coffee orders, but he tries so hard, you know? It’s not even funny watching him stumble all over himself anymore. I may give in.” 

“He deserves more than your pity.” Adam very purposefully does not look up from his work. He’s said words like those to her before. It never ends well.

“ _Deserves_?” Her voice is shrill with indignation. “Why should he _deserve_ anything? Just because he’s a dude who hasn’t purposefully been an asshole? That doesn’t mean he’s earned my attention. Attention doesn’t work that way! And anyway, you have no stones to throw here, Adam Parrish. Mr. I Can’t Separate Flattery From A Good Idea. Remember how the Tad experiment went?”

Adam winces. “He wasn’t an experiment.”

“He sure as hell wasn’t a boyfriend.” 

“He wanted to be.” 

Tad is nice enough and cute enough, if not also a bit of a snob and entirely too overeager for Adam to handle. In the end it was his blatant, all-encompassing interest that put Adam off entirely. Adam didn’t feel like a thing that could stand up to such scrutiny, blind as it may have started. 

He still doesn’t, but he also doesn’t feel like Ronan’s interest would be anything like Tad’s if it existed. He glances to where their phones are resting across the room on the windowsill charging. Blue catches the look and smirks. 

“Yes, that’s the point. He wanted a boyfriend and you wanted a puppy.” Adam opens his mouth to protest and she raises a finger. “Don’t even argue. I saw him lick your face that one time.” 

“Whatever,” Adam snaps. “I get it. I’m the world’s worst boyfriend. You don’t have to keep citing your sources.” 

Blue goes uncharacteristically quiet after that. Adam seethes into his pots of beads and looks over his notes for the positioning of the first layer of the sculpture. It’s the whole reason he started with sculpture in the first place, to try and pull order out of his anger. 

He’s been doing better on that front since he moved away from his hometown and the brutal anger that beget him. It doesn’t overtake him nearly as often, but it still flares up suddenly when it’s the last thing he wants to feel. Right now he’s shaking and it’s causing the lines to tangle. He gives up on his work, disgusted, and balls his hands into fists and places them against the table. Then he presses down on them with all of his weight to try and stop the tremor. 

Blue comes over and places her hands on top of his. “You’re not,” she says, soft and fearless. 

They’ve known each other long enough now that she isn’t afraid of his outbursts, but she’s still wary of them. She knows he won’t hurt her, but she’s not so sure he won’t do something that ends up with him hurting himself. Not since that time he punched a vending machine and ended up with two free Sprites and a cracked knuckle. He hates that she feels that way. He hates that he feels this way. He can’t bring himself to look her in the eyes and he doesn’t respond, but he doesn’t shake her off either. They both know how much of an improvement it is, how far he’s come. 

There’s a buzzing sound from across the room and they both look up. Blue squeezes his hands and pulls away so she can dash over to the windowsill. She picks up his phone and grins. “Did you really put him into your phone as Satan?”

“Maybe it’s your cousin,” he says. 

She walks the phone to him and punches him lightly in the shoulder before handing it over. “What does the dark lord want?”

Adam taps the screen and opens his texts. Ronan’s message is one word: _yes_. He hands the phone over to Blue. 

“Yes what?” she asks. 

“Yes he was hitting on me, I assume.” 

“Incredible,” she says. “This is truly a wondrous discovery. You are still the stuff of dreams for contrary assholes.” 

He plucks the phone from her grasp. “You would know.”

She doesn’t even pretend to be offended. “So, how hard are you going to make it on this one?”

“I don’t make things hard on purpose!” 

Blue raises an eyebrow. 

He sighs, thinking. “I guess I could ask him to your gallery opening Friday.” 

“This kid’s not an art major, right?”

Adam shakes his head. “Something to do with languages, I think.” 

“So it won’t be neutral ground. You’ll have the upper hand and you’ll be able to see how he rolls with blatant nonsense and blustery pretension.” Her eyes light up. “It’s perfect!”

“By perfect you mean cruel and unusual right? Maybe it should be neutral. There’s that wing place on the corner?”

She wraps an arm around his waist and leans into him with her head pressed against his bicep. “Nah, he has to learn what he’s dealing with here at some point. And hey, he did agree to be Satan. Maybe he’s into cruel and unusual.” 

“Someone has to be,” Adam says. 

He texts Ronan the invitation while she watches. He hits send and pulls a bead from her hair before resting his chin on the top of her head. It seems impossibly lucky to him that if anyone is going to be into that it might be the guy he has to spend the next several weeks thinking entirely too hard about anyway, but he also feels he’s overdue for some good old-fashioned luck.


	5. Chapter 5

All of the streets in this part of the city look the same. Same red brick buildings and fonts on bakery signs and plaques for historic shit Ronan doesn’t care about. It's not something he's ever bothered to notice before. But he also doesn’t usually care whether or not he's on time for things. He’s been on time for every one of his meetings with Adam so far, a thing Gansey prattled on about for fifteen full minutes without taking a breath just yesterday. 

_What is it about him that inspires such punctuality?_ Gansey said. _I’ve known you since we were fifteen and you have never once been on time!_ Ronan looked up from his translation and told Gansey that, if at any point in the last five years he’d wanted to go down on him, things would be different. To Ronan’s absolute delight Gansey turned an incredible shade of red and left the apartment. 

When Ronan finally finds the art gallery Adam’s standing outside waiting for him. It leaves him little time to shake off his frustration and affect his patented nonchalance. 

Adam looks up as he approaches. He takes Ronan in and his lip quirks up. “Nice of you to make an effort.” 

Every other time Ronan’s seen Adam he’s been working in one way or another and wearing jeans, flannel shirts, and t-shirts that look so worn and soft that they make Ronan’s hands itch with the desire to touch him. Tonight Adam’s wearing khakis and a blue v-neck sweater over a white button up. The blue of the sweater somehow deepens the blue of his eyes. Ronan has the absurd thought that Adam cleans up well. He attributes the phrasing to Gansey and pushes the thought away.

Ronan is wearing what he always wears: black boots, black leather jacket, jeans, some t-shirt with an obnoxious band or slogan on it. “At least I don’t look like I went to my boarding school. I’d call you by your last name if I knew it.” 

Adam wrinkles his nose. “God, I’m never telling you my last name. The little time I spend remembering my regular high school is bad enough.” 

“Townie,” Ronan says with an exaggerated sniff. 

Adam raises an eyebrow. “Boarding school?” 

“I know what you’re thinking, but it was terribly boring and incredibly lacking in stereotypical chances for experimentation. Lots of good street racing though.” 

“And you scoff at public schools,” Adam says. 

Ronan looks Adam up and down, trying to decide if he’s kidding or not. He has a quiet, fine pointed beauty that Ronan thinks could have netted Adam anyone he wanted at any time or place. But Ronan also has the sense from their handful of conversations that Adam doesn’t seem to realize how attractive he is at all, so it’s unlikely he’s ever really put his looks to work for him.

Ronan would very much like to put Adam’s looks, and the rest of him, to work for him. 

They stand there for a few moments as people walk past them on the sidewalk and spill in and out of the gallery. Ronan’s searching for an in, some indication that it’s okay to move closer, that this is different from all the other time they’ve spent opposite each other looking, looking, looking. Looking without intent to touch is so much different than looking with the hope to touch, Ronan finds. 

Adam shrugs one shoulder and gives Ronan no indication whether or not that hope is misplaced. “We should maybe go in. Less cold, more snacks.” 

“The magic words,” Ronan says. He brushes Adam’s shoulder with his own as he passes. Adam turns with him and stays close on his heels as they duck inside. 

The first person who greets them is a girl about their age with a tray of glasses full of gold, bubbly liquid. Ronan eyes them dubiously—he prefers his hangovers to burn going down—but picks up two of them anyway because turning down free booze is against his personal code. He turns to offer one to Adam, but Adam shakes his head and refuses to take the glass. Ronan stores that away as interesting and downs one of the glasses so he can get rid of it. Thankfully it’s cider and not wine, which is close enough to beer for Ronan’s tastes. Adam watches with a carefully blank expression. 

“What? It’s rude to be wasteful.” 

“I don’t know,” Adam says, with another half shrug. “You leave a half-empty glass in the right place and someone might mistake it for art.” 

“Do people often mistake you for art?” Ronan asks. 

Adam raises his eyebrows and neatly steps around him without answering. Ronan feels like it’s a small miracle it’s taken him this long to say something offensive. He puts the empty glass down on the first flat surface he can find and hurries after Adam so he doesn’t lose him in the crowd. 

Adam doesn’t go far. He gets snagged by the arm and pulled into a clutch of what Ronan can only assume are other art students, if the scarves and glasses and tight jeans are anything to go by. He hangs back for a moment and watches. 

Ronan’s not sure what he was expecting Adam to be like outside of their little two person bubble in the studio. Even when other people wander in and out during their sessions Adam pays them no mind. Ronan’s gotten so used to Adam’s cool, intense study being only for him. Now here he is, smiling slow and sincere at some joke Ronan doesn’t get. There’s a pang of jealousy in Ronan’s gut, but then Adam turns the smile on him and washes it away. 

Adam takes a small step back so there’s room for Ronan to join the circle. Ronan slides in next to him and stands a little closer than is maybe strictly necessary. Their shoulders brush as Adam leans into him a bit. 

“Ah, so you’re the devil. I should have known,” says a girl’s voice to Adam’s right. 

Across the circle, a tall blond boy wearing a cardigan with elbow patches narrows his brown eyes and lifts his chin. “The one who’s taken all of Adam’s attention away from us? I can see now why he never comes out anymore if the devil is staying in.”

Adam rolls his eyes. “I wasn’t coming out before, Tad, and you know it.” 

The guy, Tad, grins like he wants to make the obvious cheap comment. Ronan gives him a once over and decides he’s not worth his time. Then he leans around Adam to get a good look at the girl. He hadn’t even noticed she was there. But of course, at roughly two-thirds Adam’s height it’s no wonder Ronan didn’t spot her. She looks like a child. A child he’s seen somewhere before. She scowls at him. It clicks. 

“Oh god,” he says. “It’s you.” 

It’s the girl from the bookstore coffee shop. Her scowl turns into a smirk. She’s wearing much more makeup than usual, and her dress looks like it was constructed from several heirloom quilts. He wouldn’t ever have recognized her without a reason to look at her twice. 

“How’s it going, double Americano?” 

“I have a name,” Ronan says. “You misspell it almost every day.”

“I truly apologize for all the times I got it right. I didn’t mean to. What is it again? Ruben? Rehman? Rogan?”

Adam elbows her in the ribs. “Don’t be a shit.” 

“Why not?” she asks, all fake innocence and wide eyes. “You seem to like shits.” 

Ronan hates her. He thinks. He’s honestly not sure. Something about her is very familiar to him. “It’s still just Ronan,” he says, scowling. 

“Like from Lord of the Rings?” Tad says. The guy to his left giggles. 

Ronan might just hate all of them. He grits his teeth. “Like from Ireland.” 

“More’s the pity,” Blue says. She turns to Adam. “I need to go and man the photographs. See you later?” 

“Yes.” He ducks down so she can kiss his cheek. 

After Blue goes the group disperses with a string of half-hearted nice-to-meet-yous directed at Ronan—except for Tad, who looks at him coolly and pointedly says nothing—and some half-hugs and shoulder claps for Adam. When Adam turns his attention back to Ronan there’s a spark of amusement in his eyes. 

“Do you make such a good first impression wherever you go?” 

Ronan takes a sip of his cider. “What can I say? I’m a people person.” 

“Right,” Adam says, not believing him for one minute. “Ready to see some art?”

“Does the art talk back?”

“Not usually, but I make no promises.”

As it turns out, some of the art does talk back. There’s a pole in the back corner with large sound cancelling headphones hanging off it. Ronan puts a pair on and closes his eyes. He’s immediately dragged through the headphones and deep into a black hole of a memory that stretches him thin. 

There’s no conversation or singing like he assumed he would hear, it’s just sounds. House sounds, sounds like his home at the Barns used to be full of. He can hear heavy footsteps landing on a creaking hardwood floor as someone paces up and down a hallway, muffled voices discussing something in the next room, and a storm coming in as thunder shakes the rattling windows behind him. He’s torn between wanting to live here next to this poll forever and wanting to kick it until it falls over. In the end he just slips the headphones off and puts them back. 

“What is it? What happened? ” Adam asks, brows furrowed and eyes searching. Because of course he noticed the small distress Ronan was trying to swiftly bury. 

“Nothing,” Ronan says. 

He feels wrung out and overwhelmed, but he’ll be damned if he’s going to cry in front of Adam and a hundred hipster douchenozzles. He scours the room, looking for something he can feign interest in. His attention lands on a series of collage prints of pin-up girls in front of atomic clouds. 

He swallows and prays his voice doesn’t give him away. “Is that meant to be clever?”

Adam looks around them. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but probably.”

Ronan points. Adam ghosts his hand across Ronan’s hip as he orients himself in the direction of Ronan’s finger. They push through the crowd together. 

Not all of the art is terrible. Ronan gravitates toward a series of surrealistic, dream-like paintings depicting African animals doing all sorts of strange things. He’s not sure, but he doesn’t think giraffes can actually climb ladders. The two of them swoop through Blue’s photographs quickly. Ronan is thankful she’s occupied, though it doesn’t stop her from glaring her warning at him as they go past. They steal finger foods from trays by the fistful and Adam finds a bottle of water somewhere. They look and talk and snipe in whispered voices so the artists don’t overhear them. 

Forty-five minutes later Ronan’s almost enjoying himself. He’s definitely enjoying the quiet confidence Adam uses to assess each piece and the way Adam looks up at him every time for his opinion on the matter, even though he clearly has no idea what he’s talking about. He grabs some sort of puff pastries from a tray without looking and pops one into his mouth. It’s disgusting. The overly salted fishy taste of it stops him dead in his tracks and he makes a strangled sound in the back of his throat as he scans the room for a place to spit it out.

Adam turns back to him, concerned. When he sees the look on Ronan’s face he gets the waitress’s attention and asks what’s in the pastry. It’s some fancy bullshit, and knowing only makes it worse. Adam laughs clear and true as Ronan spits the slurry of seaweed foam and salmon pellets into his empty glass. 

Ronan opens his mouth wide and runs his tongue along the back of his teeth, trying to wipe away the taste. “When you said there were going to be snacks I thought you meant actual food.”

“That’s food,” Adam says, voice breathy in his amusement. “Or at least, it was at one point.” 

“Yeah, if I was a sea bass, maybe.” 

“What? Like one of those singing ones?”

“Now those are art. The perfect marriage of form and function.” Ronan passes the glass off to a waiter with an empty tray. The waiter wrinkles his nose at it and shoots Ronan a dirty look as he whisks it away. 

Adam groans. “Let’s get out of here before someone hears you and decides to argue the point.”

“Oh, I could argue that all day,” Ronan says. 

“I don’t doubt you could talk the devil himself into fire starters.” Adam takes Ronan by the elbow and turns him toward the door. He waves at people that notice him as he passes, but doesn’t stop until they’re back out on the sidewalk. Once they’re free of the crowd he lets Ronan go and takes a step back. 

Ronan’s mouth still tastes awful. He pulls the bottle of water from Adam’s hands and drinks what’s left of it. “So, did I pass your smarmy pretension test?”

“It wasn’t a test.” Adam looks past Ronan, back into the gallery, and then up further toward where the moon is peering from above the building. “But yeah, I guess if it had been you would’ve.” 

“Uh huh,” Ronan says. “I know when I’m being judged.” He holds the empty bottle out and Adam accepts it.

“Technically, I’ve been judging you since we met. I kind of have to when my grade’s on the line.” 

“I guess that’s mutual then.” 

Adam sighs and lets his gaze drift back down to Ronan’s face. “So, have I been weighed and measured and found wanting?”

“Your taste in movies is being found wanting right now.” 

“You’re the one who recognizes the quote,” Adam says, and shoves at Ronan’s shoulder. 

Ronan shifts his weight and leans further into Adam’s space, testing it. Adam doesn’t pull away. “I guess that depends on what type of wanting you’re talking about,” he says quietly. 

Adam blinks, looks down at the ground between them and up again. “Do you have to take the bus?” 

Ronan falters at the non sequitur and takes a half step back onto the grass. “No? I drove. I’m a few blocks away, over by the river. I can drive you home if you want.” 

“Nah,” Adam says. “But I’ll come that way with you.” 

Ronan shoves his hands into the pockets of his jacket and rolls his shoulders. There’s a restlessness building in him that doesn’t bode well for his dreams. “Sure.” 

Adam let’s Ronan take the lead and set the pace. They walk slow, because he’s in no hurry to give up his company and because there’s a destructive impulse in him telling him to press his luck. The longer he keeps Adam near him, the likelier he is to give in to it. 

They make small talk as they go. It frustrates Ronan, who hates small talk in general and wants to know more about Adam specifically, but he doesn’t know whether or not he’s allowed to take it deeper. He doesn’t know how Adam sees him, if he’s considered a friend yet. He doesn’t seem skittish about Ronan’s attraction to him, but he hasn’t really responded to it either. 

He has spent the whole evening touching Ronan lightly on his shoulder or elbow or lower back, guiding him through the gallery and standing close as they discussed what was in front of them. For all Ronan knows that’s just how Adam is. Though, when Ronan thinks about it, even though other people touched Adam over the course of the evening, the only other person Adam moved toward had been Gansey’s barista. No, he thinks, Adam’s barista. Or maybe Adam’s…

“That girl,” he says. He’s not sure what he wants to ask, but he feels a need to know how Adam’s inroads work. 

Adam stops mid-description of some movie that gave him nightmares when he was nine and tilts his head toward Ronan. “Blue?”

“Yeah, that one.” Ronan makes a vague gesture from his chest to the sidewalk instead of verbally coming up with anything. No matter how he words it in his head it sounds wrong, jealous and invasive when he has no right to be either.

Adam nods. “She’s my roommate, and my friend, and…” 

Ronan lets that pause sink in. “And? Currently?”

Adam barks out a laugh. “Noooo. Oh no, years ago. That’s not a lesson I need to be taught twice. Why do you want to know?”

Because I want you, Ronan thinks. He shrugs. “My friend likes her.”

“I wish him luck,” Adam says. “He’s gonna need it.” He sounds completely sincere. 

They jog across the street ahead of a truck and up onto the sidewalk where it runs along the river. Adam stops at the low, red brick wall that follows the bank and leans his elbows on it. Bathed in the orange glow of the street lights and standing out stark against the darkness of the water and the skyline behind he looks like a beacon. He looks safe and warm. Ronan wants to curl into him and see if he actually is. 

Instead, he leans against the wall next to Adam, close enough that their shoulders and elbows are touching. He looks out over the river in silence, taking in the sound of the water, the cars, the wind, and under it all, Adam’s quiet breath. This is something Ronan would never dream. This orderly river and this quiet boy, both rushing riotous just beneath the surface. For the first time in quite some time Ronan feels awake and present, ready to give instead of take.

Ronan studies Adam, there’s a light puff of fog forming in his exhalations. The temperature’s finally starting to dip into winter for the year. Adam must be freezing out here by the water with the wind whipping up the open corridor between the banks of the river, but he doesn’t show any indication that he’s uncomfortable. Maybe he’s just made of sterner stuff than Ronan. 

“When I was little,” Ronan says, just to take his mind off the possibility of warming Adam up. “My dad used to wait until the first freeze of the year and then take me and my brothers for a swim in the lake in the far pasture.” 

“You lived on a farm?” Adam asks. 

That’s not the part of the story Ronan expects Adam to get caught on. Most people, the few he ever talks to about his father anyway, always get caught up in the whimsy and drama of the ridiculous and impossible things their family did, not the setting. Maybe artists don’t think like regular people. Or maybe artists are artists because they were never regular people to begin with. Adam is decidedly not common or regular. 

“More of a ranch, I guess. All cows, no food.” 

“Huh,” Adam says. “I never would have guessed that. Though now that I think about it, you do wear a lot of leather.” He flips his wrist and reaches out a finger to run it over the bracelets around Ronan’s wrist. His finger is cold, but the places where the tip of it grazes Ronan’s skin stay warm after he pulls his hand away. “Old friends?”

“Not like that.” 

Adam nods as if that makes perfect sense. Maybe to him it does. 

“What about you?” 

Adam tenses and pulls away. “I’m, I’m not from anywhere.” 

“You have to be from somewhere. It’s not like someone dreamt you up.” 

It’s not like I dreamt you up, he thinks.

Adam frowns and looks down at the water like it holds the answer to the problem of home. Ronan can tell him from personal experience that it doesn’t. He shakes his head. “No, I’m sure your dreams are much more interesting than I am.” 

That’s so wrong Ronan doesn’t even know where to start. Ronan wishes he could dream up someone like Adam. Someone with deep eyes and quiet intensity and a magnetism that pulls at the very core of him. Someone good and quiet and soft that he can hold. As opposed to the small bright miracles he pulls from the prickling darkness and the bristling danger. As opposed to the creatures with feathers and claws that he’s spent so many nights evading. 

“Hey,” Ronan says. He twists around so that he’s facing Adam. Still close, Adam’s shoulder is only centimeters from his chest. The empty space between them is heavy and electric. Ronan wants to get rid of it. He reaches up and brushes the back of Adam’s collar with light fingers. Then he softly and slowly touches the underside of Adam’s chin. “Hey.” 

Adam turns to look at Ronan. That impulse that’s been eating away at the inside of Ronan’s rib cage all night breaks free. Ronan leans forward and kisses him. 

It’s just a light brush of skin on skin, soft as his fingers glancing away from Adam’s throat. For one crystalline moment Ronan thinks he’s figured it out. Whatever it is. Whatever that unattainable thing all those dead poets he has to translate are always going on about. It’s a short-lived surety, because Adam does not kiss him back. He goes tense all over. When Ronan pulls back Adam’s standing frozen, just watching Ronan’s movements. 

Fuck. What is this? What has this been if not leading to that? How is Ronan so wrong?

“I’m,” he starts. 

Adam shakes his head vigorously and pulls away. Now there’s too much space between them. It stretches thin and the imagined connection snaps. Ronan’s lips have already gone cold. He aches inside to step forward and follow Adam’s warmth, but for all the terrible things people often think of Ronan, he’s not that. He doesn’t go where he’s not wanted. He’d put up with enough of that in high school to know better. 

“No,” Adam says. “It’s not. I uh, I have to go. It’s me. I’m sorry.” He takes several quick steps backwards, then turns on his heel and walks away fast, back the way they’d come. 

Ronan stands rooted to his spot and watches Adam go. “What the fuck?” he whispers to the river. The river does not answer. 

 

That night Ronan does dream of Adam. He’s a lighthouse. The deep blue of his eyes matches the ocean and offers no warning of what's below. Ronan scuttles himself on the rocks trying to reach him. He wakes up too early the next morning clutching two large stone beads the color grey clouds reflected on deep clear blue water. They’re caught between his hand and his ribcage, just below a bruise blooming there, left by the rocks. 

Ronan carefully sets them on the edge of his pillow so they don’t roll away. He stares at them and thinks about Adam’s lips on his until his eyelids become heavy and he goes back to sleep.


	6. Chapter 6

Adam feels like he’s walking a fine line between just obnoxious and incredibly needy, if there even is a line. As of right this moment he’s sent eight texts to Ronan in the last four days. He’s been sending one before lunch and then one again before he goes to bed, because he knows that he’ll be free to answer on the off-chance Ronan replies. Or, more practically, he’ll be free to stare at his phone in frustration for a while without interruption. 

Sometimes he even takes it out between classes and reads back over what he’s sent, trying to figure out what he’s doing wrong and if there’s something he can use to unlock an answer. As if people have cheat codes. Even if they did he’d probably just reach the end and be told his prince is in another castle. So much for good old-fashioned luck. Which isn’t a fair thought. The universe delivered what he wanted on a black, jagged platter. He just didn’t know what to do with it when he got it. 

But that’s not quite right either. He had known. For all his worry about his relative inexperience that isn’t what tripped him up. His body had known what to do so deep down that he felt it in his bones—felt the urge to grip Ronan’s hip, to cup the back of his head, to pull him impossibly closer. No, it was Adam’s brain that got in the way. Ronan’s question made him think of home, and thinking of home always makes him feel lost and raw and new. There’s no way he’s ever going to be able to hold the fact of his upbringing in his mind at the same time as the fact of his now. They don’t jive. The crowding of them doesn’t leave room for feelings and kissing and moving on. He’s the same as he ever was. It’s not a comforting realization.

Ronan was just so warm. Adam feels infected by it, like he hadn’t realized it was getting cold until Ronan breathed his warmth into him and now it’s all Adam can think about. Ronan’s fingers skittering under his chin and down his neck. Ronan’s chest solid against his shoulder and his hip pressing into Adam’s hip. Adam’s spent the entirety of their acquaintanceship getting a feel for Ronan’s form, but now that he has a literal feel for it he thinks he might need to change some things. To tease out the essence of the devil that feels like it’s lying quietly in wait in Ronan rather than just presenting a copy of him.

Adam’s looking at his phone when Blue comes crashing into the studio with her arms full of lighting equipment. He watches her struggle over to their shared corner, knowing that if he moves to help he’ll only get a dressing down for his trouble.

She gets everything stowed away and tries to blow a piece of hair away from her forehead. “Still nothing?” 

“No.” He drops the phone into his messenger bag where he can’t be tempted by it. “I really fucked up.”

She rolls her eyes. “Yes, how dare you show human emotions. I hear they really get in the way of wanting to bone.” 

“Ain’t no cockblock like a Parrish self-cockblock, cause a Parrish self-cockblock don’t stop until everyone’s feeling really awkward and rethinking every one of their life choices.” 

“See!” she says. “You’re a man of many talents, working tirelessly to distinguish himself in his field. Any asshole would be lucky to have you!”

“Thanks, I think.”

“You’re welcome!” she says breezily. She comes to stand at his elbow and looks over the lines of beads he has strung and ready to be placed on the ceiling frame. “Are you not stringing the feathers with the beads?”

“I wanted to touch them as little as possible. I was worried about fraying them and ruining the finished product.” 

Blue studies him for a long moment. “You’re talking about the feathers, right?” 

Adam is five seconds from telling her he’s not having this conversation again when there’s a knock on the studio door. Ronan comes through it a moment later, head up and shoulders straight and proud in a way that makes Adam deeply envious. He’s always deeply envious of people who are comfortable in their own bodies. Adam looks down immediately, unable to meet Ronan’s eyes, worried about the sort of reproach that needs to be delivered in person. He shouldn’t have sent those texts. Shit.

Blue pinches him in the side and he pulls away from her. “Buck up,” she hisses. “This is good.” Then, louder, to Ronan she drawls, “Well speak of the devil.” 

Ronan shuts the door behind him and frowns at her. “Are you under the mistaken impression you’re funny?”

“I’m under the correct impression I’m fucking hilarious. Just ask anyone.” 

“Don’t you have some coffee somewhere you need to ruin?” 

She crosses her arms. “Hey, asshole, it’s not my fault the customer is always right.” 

Ronan glares at her, unblinking. Adam reaches down and lightly shoves at her hip. 

“Alright, I’m going,” she says. She shoves Adam back and retrieves her bag. Once she has it she marches straight up to Ronan and glares at him defiantly. She looks like a field mouse taking on a house cat. Adam would laugh if he wasn’t so mortified. “If you’re taking over Parrish duty you have to tell him when he’s being an idiot.” 

Ronan rolls his eyes magnificently, for which Adam is grateful. “I don’t have to do anything.”

“No,” she agrees. “But you’ll want to. Side effect of exposure.” 

“I’m right here!” Adam says. She winks at him and he flicks her off. 

She bites her thumb and wiggles her fingers in his direction on her way out. Blue slams the door behind her. It makes Adam jump. Ronan watches him, but he hangs by the doorway like he’s not sure he’s allowed to move any further into the room. Now that they’re alone Adam can feel the ghost of Ronan’s warmth seeping back into him. Or maybe it’s just his embarrassment finally catching up with him. 

“So, your last name’s Parrish?” Ronan gestures toward him with a hand that’s still stuffed into his jacket pocket, making it look a bit like he’s flapping a wing. 

“Don’t even think about it.” 

“Think about what, Parrish?”

Adam runs his hand through his hair in frustration. “One day, I’m going to have a crush on someone who’s not really obnoxious.” 

“You seem to have a type,” Ronan says, looking pointedly out the small window set into the door. 

“I’m glad you agree. Are you going to just stand there in the doorway and watch me, or do you want to help?” 

“Is that first thing an option?” 

Adam is at once flattered that Ronan seems to find him worthy of watching and incredibly self-conscious over the idea of being watched. “You don’t seem like the type of guy who settles for the cheap seats.”

“Well, when you put it that way.” Ronan ambles between the workspaces and comes to stand across from Adam at his table. He looks down at the strands of beads and finally pulls a hand from his jacket pocket to ghost his fingers over them. “This looks like it’s boring as shit to actually do.” 

Adam shrugs. He picks up one of the looped ends of the wires and nods at Ronan, who picks up the other end of it. They lift it together and Ronan watches while Adam climbs the ladder next to the table to hang it on the frame. Once Adam gets it hung he turns to start on his way down, but Ronan is there holding the next wire up for him, his arms wide so that the carefully strung beads don’t drag across the floor. They work that way in silence for about thirty minutes before Adam’s arms start to ache from holding them above his head and he decides to take a break. 

He comes down the ladder and stretches each arm across his chest, pulling the muscles taut to relieve some of the stress. “I know,” he says, even though Ronan hasn’t made a comment. “It’s pathetic how weak I am. I used to be able to hold a wrench above my head for an hour.” 

Ronan raises an eyebrow. “You sure had weird extracurriculars in public school.”

“You’re hysterical,” Adam deadpans. “No, I worked at a garage all through high school to make money to get out.”

“Their loss is the bead manufacturers’ gain, I guess. What made you?” He gestures to the beads still stretched across the table. Ronan does that a lot, Adam’s realizing, and he wonders if it’s a disinterest in words or an inability to wrangle them.

Adam sits on one of the middle rungs of the ladder and looks up at Ronan, trying to decide how much to tell him. In past relationships he’s always made himself softer and tried to smooth out all of his edges in the beginning, so he didn’t scare people off. Ronan doesn’t seem like he scares easy. He’s here, anyway, after the disaster that was the attempted and aborted first kiss. He hasn’t told Adam to stop texting him, that he never wants to see him again. Adam takes a few breaths to steady himself before answering. 

“I uh, petitioned for emancipation from my parents senior year of high school and there was some emotional stuff I was going through. Panic attacks, flares of anger, it felt like I could just sort of, step away from my body, you know? I needed something to focus on and I had an art teacher who paid really good attention to her students.” He shrugs, trying to downplay what is clearly the hardest thing he’s ever been through. 

To Ronan’s credit, he doesn’t seem to be buying the nonchalance. He sits down on the floor next to the ladder so he’s looking up at Adam. It makes Adam feel a little off kilter, having Ronan beneath him. Ronan pulls his knees up to his chest and wraps his arms around them. “Did you get it?” he asks. 

Adam nods. There’s a lot in the nod that goes without saying, but Ronan seems to understand that. 

Ronan inhales through flared nostrils and lets out a long exhale through loosely pursed lips. “Isn’t there anyone these days who’s not a total god damned mess?” 

“I blame sugary cereals,” Adam says. 

They sit quietly together. Ronan picks at the laces on his boots and Adam watches his fingers dance about like birds picking at seeds. After a few minutes Ronan’s fingers go still. “So, you do have a crush on me after all,” he says. 

Adam winces. “That really does make me sound like I’m ten.” 

“Hey, your words, not mine.” 

Adam waves his hand, dismissive. Ronan seems full of energy suddenly. He’s jiggling his knee and chewing at his lip like he’s teetering on the verge of a bad idea. Adam has never been one to interrupt bad ideas. 

“You think,” Ronan says, slow and cautious. His face is still tilted toward his boots, but he’s looking up at Adam from underneath the fringe of his impossibly long black eyelashes “That if I tried to kiss you again, you wouldn’t run away this time?” 

“I make no promises,” Adam says. He’s kidding, but he’s sort of not. There are just some things he doesn’t have total control over yet, even though he’s been working hard on them. 

Ronan nods. He pushes himself to his knees and crawls over to where Adam’s perched on the ladder. Adam still has to look down at him, just a little. It feels weird, because Adam likes that Ronan is taller than him, but it also feels safe for some reason so Adam goes with it. Ronan reaches up and gently cups Adam’s cheek with one warm hand. Adam reaches back and places his open palm against Ronan’s chest. The cotton of his t-shirt is soft and thin and the body beneath it is firm. Ronan leans forward and stops about half an inch away. 

The bright afternoon sunlight filtering in through the windows washes out the light blue of Ronan’s eyes and makes them look more grey. Adam can feel Ronan’s breath ghosting over his lips and chin. He can feel the slight tremble in Ronan’s fingers where they’re brushing at the edge of his hairline. He gets caught there, lost in the giddy feeling of anticipation and the warmth he’s been craving. 

This is okay, he thinks. I want more. He can’t figure out why Ronan, who is clearly putting some real effort into holding back, isn’t giving him more. 

Ronan runs his tongue across his lower lip and everything clicks into place. He’s waiting for Adam to come to him. He’s giving Adam the space to take the time that he needs and trying not to overwhelm him or make him feel like he’s being pushed. He’s taking Adam’s past actions and adapting around them. No one Adam’s ever wanted has done that before. At least, not as quick and not as gracious. 

Adam is overcome by a swell of gratitude that washes all of the fear and worry right out of his chest. It makes room for curiosity and want. Ronan is staring at his lips, so Adam mouths _thank you_ , and then pushes forward into the kiss. 

It starts out chaste, just dry brushes of lips. Ronan nuzzles his nose into Adam’s and slides his hand up into Adam’s hair, holding him close. His other hand lands on Adam’s thigh, fingers squeezing gently just above the knee and anchoring them both. Adam’s grateful for that too, because he feels a little like he might float away. 

Adam still wants more. He closes his hand into a fist around the fabric of Ronan’s shirt and pulls him closer. He wraps his other arm around Ronan’s neck and clings to him as he opens his mouth and tentatively licks across Ronan’s lips. Ronan opens up for him, easy as breathing, and when their tongues meet Adam’s whole body is flooded with warmth. He’s the artist, but Ronan’s the one breathing life into this creation. The kiss stays slow and sure until Adam feels like he’s run out of breath. He breaks away. 

“Fuck,” Ronan breathes. “Why did we waste all our time with that art shit when we could’ve been doing this?” 

Adam’s startled into a quiet laugh. He presses his forehead to Ronan’s. “Because kissing you doesn’t get me course credits?”

“Bullshit, I’ve been to modern art museums. This is exactly the sort of uncomfortable performance art that the general public eats up. Hell, I can already see it. You be Capitalism, I’ll be Anarchy.” He affects a 1940s newsreel voice and gives Adam the smarmiest smirk the world has ever seen. “I’ll topple you good, baby.” 

Adam laughs louder this time and pulls away. “Why do I have to be Capitalism?” He leans his head back against the edge of the ladder frame. Once he has his giggles under control he looks up at the ceiling. “I really am sorry.” 

“Yeah, I got your texts. It’s, whatever. Stop apologizing. What do you have to apologize for?”

“You deserve better than this.” 

“God, Parrish. Deserve nothing. That’s not how it works. Tell your friend you filled your idiocy quota for the day and that I called you on it.” 

“I can’t tell her she’s _right_ , I’ll never hear the end of it.” 

Ronan wraps his arms around Adam’s waist and rests his head against Adam’s chest. It rises and falls with Adam’s breath. Adam leans into him, cheek pressed against the prickly ends of Ronan’s hair. It feels like they could stay here and melt into a single entity and Adam, who has always prided himself on his autonomy, is weirdly okay with the thought. Anarchy.

Eventually Ronan pulls away. He sighs in something like heavy resignation. “So this is maybe a bit stupid, but I got you something.” 

“You got me something? Ronan, I don’t need anything from you. I don’t want—”

“Oh just stop,” he says. “I saw them and they made me think of you.” 

Ronan reaches into an interior pocket in his jacket. When he holds his hand up between them there are two roughly round stones about the size of golf balls laying together in his open palm. There’s a small hole running through the center of each of them so they’ll be easy to string. They’re the color of cornflower and steel, but there’s light rippling across them in flashes of royal blue and navy grey like they’re tiny mirrorballs, even though there’s not a moving source of light. These flashes of deeper color look a little like the depth in Ronan’s eyes. 

“These will be a great finishing touch. Where did you find them?”

“They’re not meant to—,” Ronan starts, but can’t seem to find the words for his objection. He finishes the sentence with a small, noncommittal grunt. “Where does anyone find anything?” 

“I suppose you just magicked them up then,” Adam teases. 

Ronan gives him a thoughtful look before saying, “Do I look like a god damned magician to you?”

“Are robes and pointy hats not your aesthetic?” 

“Hard to wear pointy hats.” Ronan takes one of the stones in each hand and closes his fists around them. Then he holds his raised pointer fingers up on either side of his head and wiggles them. “Damn antlers always getting in the way.” 

Adam groans. “Satan does not have antlers.” 

“Stop telling me what I do and do not have, Parrish.” 

“Stop calling me that.” 

“You stop first,” Ronan says. 

Adam reaches out to rest his hands against Ronan’s shoulders. He pushes Ronan back as he slides down and off the ladder to kneel on the floor. When they’re both on their knees the difference in height is less noticeable. Adam slides his hands down Ronan’s chest and tucks them into his jacket and around his waist. He leans into their third kiss without hesitation.


	7. Chapter 7

Ronan’s phone is squawking, but since it’s in the living room and he is in his room he’s not paying attention to it. Well, he’s trying not to pay attention to it. He’s lying on his bed, staring up at the ceiling and so aggressively not paying attention to the sound his phone is making that he might as well just be paying attention to it. He kind of wants to be, which is why he’s not.

It’s the exact opposite of the way he’s always felt about phones. He still doesn’t like them, but suddenly this hated thing is a line to the person he’s most curious about. He doesn’t really text Adam back ever, but he finds that if the phone is near him he’ll stare at it and will it to squawk instead of doing anything else he should be doing. 

Which is why it’s in the living room while he’s in his room. 

“Roooooonaaaaaaaan!” Gansey calls through the closed door, protracted and aggrieved.

Ronan waits for Gansey to come in and force the phone back on him. He doesn’t, so Ronan continues his very important ceiling vigil. Someone drives slowly by on the street outside and their headlights bounce up and cut across Ronan’s walls. The light is so intensely bright he thinks they must be xenons. Or something close to that. Maybe even those ludicrous angel eye lamps. 

Angel eyes. He’s never understood what a car needs a set of halos for. Cars aren’t good or bad, they’re the marriage of form and function at its purest. They’re exactly what they need to be in a way no one capable of either sainthood or devilry can be. Ronan’s never really understood why anything needs a halo. 

In the living room his phone goes off again. It’s a remix some local DJ’s done of a song he liked when he was in high school. _Squash oooo-o-o-o-onnne, squaaaahahahahaha_ , then it devolves into a sampling of some ludicrous bird squawking noise that punches pleasantly at his ear drums. He loves it.

“This is the worst!” Gansey shouts through his door. “Why are you torturing me? What have I done to you!?” There’s a muffled thump as something hits the thin wood between them. Probably a couch cushion. Gansey wouldn’t throw the phone. He has too much respect for other people’s things to damage them. 

“You can put it on silent!” Ronan shouts back. 

“Then how will you know you’ve got anything to ignore?” Gansey has a point. 

Ronan rolls across the mattress until his feet hit the floor. When he opens the door to his room a couch cushion falls against his shins. “Not that I know why you’d want to put it on silent. That’s like, the greatest song ever.” 

Gansey grimaces. “That’s not a song, it’s a meme.” He holds the phone into the air from where he’s sprawled across the part of the couch that’s still cushioned. “Here. Please, for the love of god, text him back.” 

Ronan steps over the cushion and leans across the coffee table to snatch his phone away. “Maybe I’m playing hard to get.” 

“Ronan,” Gansey sighs. “You’re hard even after you’ve been got, so I don’t know what the point of protracting the not getting would be.” 

“Oh, I’m hard alright,” Ronan says. 

Gansey grunts, refusing to take the bait, and goes back to the heavy, brittle text in his lap. Ronan swipes across the screen and checks the time. 12:03 AM. He technically hasn’t seen Adam yet today. It might not look too desperate if he stops by the studio. If Adam is still there. 

Adam’s sent him four texts over the last several minutes, though three of them are one long text outlining a slightly manic thought process having to do with down feathers and fault lines. It makes absolutely no sense while also perfectly illustrating what Ronan’s pretty sure his Earth Science teacher tried to get across to him when he was twelve. Ronan still doesn’t care about fault lines, but he is slightly concerned that if Adam spends any more time alone with his beads he’ll crack like the earth’s crust. 

He tells himself it’s concern anyway, and definitely not selfishness.

The last text simply says, _are you awake?_

Ronan types _yes_ into the box and slides the phone into the back pocket of his jeans. “I’m going out,” he announces. 

“Thank god,” Gansey replies. “See if you can find where you lost all the pleasant bits of your personality while you’re gone.”

“I didn’t lose them,” Ronan says. He toes on a pair of tennis shoes and collects his leather jacket and messenger bag from the floor by the front door. “I left them behind on purpose, to keep my virtue company.” 

Gansey tips his head back against the arm of the sofa and gives Ronan a long suffering, disapproving look. It would be more effective if he wasn’t looking at Ronan upside down. Instead of saying goodbye, Ronan makes a rude, repetitive stroking gesture with his free hand. Gansey frowns. Ronan steps into the hallway and closes the door behind him before that frown can have any accidental positive effect on his behavior. 

On the way to campus he stops at a 24 hour coffee shop to pick up a snack. When he pulls through to the window Blue is staring down at him, holding a tray with three cups. “Are you stalking me?” she asks. 

“I’m actually trying to stay as far away from you as possible,” he says, because he doesn’t lie. 

“You’re doing a remarkably shitty job of it.” 

“Are you a clone or something? Does every one of these places have one of you to talk down to the clientele?”

“They wish. If you don’t think heavy judgment isn’t a natural and coveted part of the cafe going experience then I don’t know what to tell you.” 

“How about nothing?” he says through his teeth. “I only ordered two drinks. Why do you have three cups?” 

“One of these is for Tad.” 

“Who the fuck is Tad?” Ronan remembers who the fuck Tad is as soon as he says it. The uncreative, possessive one from the gallery. “And why the fuck would I bring him a drink?”

“Because if you don’t he’s going third wheel your studio date out of sheer stubbornness and end up falling asleep on one of the tables.” 

“You make this sound like it’s a common occurrence.” 

“Do I?” Blue asks, in a cool voice that suggests Ronan’s exceedingly ignorant. Maybe he is. She doesn’t give him time to respond. “There are two vanilla scones in here. They’re Adam’s favorite. He’ll offer you one, don’t take it.” 

“Then what am I—?”

“Brownies.” 

“That’s not what I ordered.”

“If you want it your way, there’s a burger place just across the street there.” She leans through the window and passes out the drink tray and little brown bags, forcing him to take them before they’re dropped in his lap. “I assume I don’t have to tell you not to fuck up.”

Ronan scowls. “That’s like telling the wind not to blow.” 

She crosses her arms and levels him with a serious, straight lipped look that feels at least three times the size of her. 

“I don’t want to,” he admits. 

She stares at him for a moment longer before nodding and holding out her hand. Ronan gives her his credit card. She runs it, thanks him for the tip he definitely didn’t authorize, and shoos him on his way. 

When Ronan makes it to Adam’s studio there are indeed two people inside. Adam’s up on the top of the ladder fiddling with one of the wires and Tad is standing next to it, looking up at Adam and running a steadying hand up Adam’s calf. Or at least, Ronan thinks it’s meant to appear steadying. What it actually looks like is someone else feeling Adam up. 

An icy spike of jealousy shoots along Ronan’s spine. He wants to slam the door, but his hands are full, and at any rate, he doesn’t want to startle Adam into falling. Partially because Ronan’s reasonably sure Adam won’t let him kiss his neck if it’s broken—which would be terrible, Ronan’s been thinking about kissing his neck for over a week now—and partially because in his mind he has a very clear image of Tad actually managing to catch Adam like they’re in a god damned romantic comedy. He settles for stalking over to the table where the strings of beads are stretched out and noisily putting his things down. 

Adam smiles down at him. “Is that coffee? You’re a lifesaver.” 

Tad frowns and tightens his grip on the back of Adam’s knee. “Rohan,” he says. 

“Still just Ronan.” Ronan turns the cups around in the tray until he finds the one marked with Tad’s name and holds it out to him. “Here.” 

Tad narrows his eyes. “To what do I owe the caffeination?” 

“I’m fucking magnanimous,” Ronan says. “Now get lost.” 

“I’m guessing that’s Blue’s doing. She mentioned she was picking up an extra shift tonight.” Adam climbs down the ladder, forcing Tad to let go of him. “That was nice of her, to think of you, Tad.” 

Adam reaches across the table to take the drink from Ronan. He passes it to Tad, who accepts it from him without question. Then he walks purposefully around the table and crashes into Ronan without slowing. Ronan is forced a couple steps back as Adam slides his hand into Ronan’s back pocket between his phone and the denim and tugs him into the most enthusiastic kiss Ronan’s ever received. 

Behind Ronan, Tad makes a small, strangled noise. “Yes, nice,” he says. “I’m just gonna...I’ll see you later, man.” 

“Mmhmm,” Adam hums into Ronan’s mouth.

Ronan half-listens as Tad collects his things and slips out the door, but it’s hard to really focus on anything but Adam. Once they’re alone, Adam pulls back. He ducks his head, embarrassed. 

“Sorry about that. You have to be blunt with him. He takes hints like an armadillo takes to water.” 

The word armadillo comes out as an accented victim of Adam’s exhaustion, stretched thin into _aaarmadilla_. Ronan is in love with the way that word sounds.

“I thought I made myself clear enough.” 

“Do you?” Adam says. It’s just as indicative of Ronan’s ignorance as Blue had been, but it is much kinder in being so. He pulls his hand from Ronan’s pocket and opens one of the brown bags. “Scones! She gave me two, do you want one?”

Ronan looks at Adam’s outstretched hand and the white, triangle shaped pastries sitting nestled in the paper bag. He doesn’t know why a person would give away a thing they want. In general he lives on the principle that, if someone’s dumb enough to give something away then there’s no foul in taking it, regardless of whether or not the person wants to part with it in the first place. But from what Ronan understands, Adam’s had enough things taken from him. Ronan shakes his head. Adam bites into one of the scones and little flecks of it stick to his lips. Ronan wants to lick them off. 

Instead, he busies himself by pulling the notes for his Latin final from his bag and laying them out near Adam’s work on the table. “You don’t mind if I do this, do you?” 

Adam looks over the array of books. “Not at all,” he says, mouth full. “Actually, could you read out loud? I’ve been up for two days and I feel like I’m going to die. I’m a little worried about falling off the ladder.”

“That explains your handsy helper.”

Adam takes another small bite. “There is nothing that will explain him. I stopped trying ages ago.” 

The way he says it makes Ronan feel like he’s in on a joke. It’s not a feeling Ronan’s had many times in his life, since he gets along with so few people. Or, more accurately, since so few people bother trying to get along with him. “Why don’t you just go take a nap and then come back, man?” 

Adam looks from Ronan to the shape taking form on the frame. He started with the back of the sculpture, so all that’s really legible is a pair of bare feet and part of the legs attached. There are a few beads hanging suspended above on their own, incongruous to the space around them. Ronan thinks those are probably the start of his shoulders. Adam shakes his head. 

“Too much to do before the progress check later on. I’ll sleep tonight.” 

Ronan crosses his arms. “Killing yourself for your art isn’t really as noble as those yahoos will have you believe.”

“Just read,” Adam says. He slips out of his green and black flannel to reveal a plain white t-shirt underneath. In his t-shirt, jeans, and socks, with his hair mussed and his eyelids low, he looks boyish and uncertain. Something fierce and protective flares in Ronan in response.

Just because he can, Ronan runs a hand through Adam’s hair to muss it up more and then rests his hand on the back of his head to pull Adam close. He kisses him quick and light and shoves him away. “Go on then, genius.” 

Adam shoves him back. He rounds the table, picks up another strand, and climbs the ladder. Ronan watches him for a few moments, then he begins to read. He stops every few sentences to make a note or fix a wonky translation. Adam doesn’t tease him about the incorrect parts, so Ronan assumes he doesn’t know the difference anyway. Why would he? When would Adam have learned Latin? Eventually, he runs out of passage. 

At first Ronan leans forward and rests his head on the book. The clock on the wall says it’s almost two in the morning, which isn’t typically a time when Ronan would be sleeping, but something about Adam’s repetitive movement, the slithering sound of the beads sliding off the table and knocking together, and the droning sound of his own voice, has lulled him into a state of sleepy that he’s not often privy to. His eyes slip closed for a few seconds before he sits upright again and shakes his head. It seems cruel to fall asleep right in front of Adam, knowing that Adam can’t, or won’t, take any sleep of his own. 

Adam’s on top of the ladder fiddling with another one of the wires. Behind him the night sky is black through the windows and the moon is starting its slow descent back to the horizon. It’s fat and full and it’s dipped just enough that when Adam tilts his head back to check his knots it frames him like a crown, like a halo. It seems appropriate in a way that Ronan offering himself up to be Satan had seemed appropriate at the time. Just a person slotting into their designated function. The only difference is, Ronan’s seen the devil. He’s never seen proof of angels. 

“Don’t tucker out on me now,” Adam says. There’s a lilt in his tired voice that lets Ronan know he’s kidding. He won’t begrudge Ronan his sleep. 

But Ronan would, so he looks back down at his book and flips the page. The next set of lines is something entirely uninspiring, and while Adam won’t know, it feels wrong to read him something so tedious when he’s already doing tedious work of his own. Ronan looks up at Adam, still framed by the moon. He looks back down at the book. He begins to recite not what’s in front of him, but what’s inside of him. 

“Amoenissimus es; illud odi.” 

Adam climbs down the ladder. He settles sharp, thoughtful eyes on Ronan for a moment, but he doesn’t comment. He merely picks up another strand and turns to climb back up. 

“Iniquum est nos modo convenire.”

Adam hums lightly, but it seems to be more of a tune than a response, because he falters, but keeps going. His voice is soft and the tune is familiar and it makes Ronan feel like he’s in some sort of impromptu play, his voice the point against Adam’s counterpoint. He hopes it’s not a tragedy. 

“Ut deerrem. Ut te caream.” Ronan turns a page. “Qui caream istud brevitissime habitum? Non quasi tu mihi es. Non mihi te carere.”

The beads on the strands are starting to stretch farther up the wire and Ronan watches as Adam runs his hands across the thin line of the start of the sculpture’s back. His fingers are curved slightly, like he’s playing a harp, but no rich notes escape. Just the now constant _swish swish_ of them knocking together. 

“Quid enim proderit corona diabolo?” he asks, and then slaps the book loudly shut and pushes it away. 

“Run out of words?” Adam climbs down the ladder. 

“Something like that.” 

Adam stands next to the table with his hands on his hips, studying the work he’s done so far. There’s a Ronan-sized shape forming in the air in front of them, slowly but surely. Ronan thinks back to that first time he knelt in front of Adam on his knees. How unsure he’d been of Adam and himself, how little he knew about what he wanted. Now he wants so much it makes him delirious and slightly ill just thinking about it. How fair is it to place that much want on one person? How can one person even stand the brunt of it? 

“I bet if you pass these off to me like you were the other day, we can be done just as the diner opens.” 

“Gravy and home fries,” Ronan says. “The breakfast of champions.” He slides off the stool and comes around the end of the table to join Adam in studying the sculpture so far. 

Adam turns a small smile on Ronan and it makes his skin feel tight. All the energy in him is potential straining toward kinetic, straining toward Adam. He loops his arm around Adam’s shoulders and leans into him. Adam leans back, the top of his head resting against Ronan’s temple. Somehow, all of the beauty in the world becomes condensed into this dingy, cluttered space and all of the places where they’re touching. 

Ronan closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, trying to memorize the feel of all of it so he can capture the essence of this for his dreams. Then he pulls away and picks up a strand of beads to pass over. “Come on,” he says. “Those home fries aren’t going to eat themselves.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That Latin translates roughly to: 
> 
> Amoenissimus es; illud odi. || You're so beautiful; I hate it.  
> Iniquum est nos modo convenire. || It's unfair that we just met.  
> Ut deerrem. Ut te caream. || I'm afraid I'll fuck up. I'm afraid that I'll lose you.  
> Qui caream istud brevitissime habitum? || How can I miss something I haven't had for very long?  
> Non quasi tu mihi es. Non mihi te carere. || It's not like you are mine. You're not mine to lose.  
> Quid enim proderit corona diabolo? || What good does a halo do the devil anyway?
> 
> Special thanks to [@polytropia](http://polytropia.tumblr.com/) for looking at my rambling dialogue and going 'that literally won't work' and then making it work as close as she could.


	8. Chapter 8

_Amoenissimus es; illud odi._

_You’re so beautiful; I hate it._

Adam turns the words over in his mind all through breakfast. He feels guilty and ashamed that he didn’t respond. That he didn’t tell Ronan from the start that the reason he wanted him to read out loud was because he was actually quite good in Latin and never had the opportunity to hear it spoken anymore. That he just let Ronan lay himself out like that thinking his confession had no witness. The words clearly weren’t meant for him. Well, not yet. 

If Adam’s feeling inclined to be generous with himself he can claim that at first he didn’t realize when Ronan changed from rote translation to something more off the cuff. Adam is never generous when it comes to himself though, and he knows that really, he was just as confused by the idea that anyone would talk about him that way as he was flattered by it. 

He’s not beautiful. He’s not worth missing, worth worrying about losing. He does not have a halo any more than Ronan has horns. The very concepts are flawed. Ronan could have said them in plain English and Adam still would have claimed not to understand. 

The thing is, he does understand some of it. Not just the Latin, but the impulse to bury overly sentimental feelings that might get him in trouble. They’ve known each other for less than a month. It’s hardly fair to weigh down a fledgling relationship with expectations. But Adam is a person who is made of expectations. He’s been used to living with them for a long time now.

He’s not sure how to let Ronan know that, though. Right this moment he’s trying to say it with his hands, skirting them up under the hem of Ronan’s t-shirt as he twists uncomfortably in the passenger seat of Ronan’s BMW. If it was ten at night instead of seven in the morning he’d find a way to get over his stupid anxiety and invite Ronan up, but Adam thinks Blue is probably asleep and they have very thin walls. If there’s one thing his short stint in the dorms taught him it’s that having to be utterly silent isn’t very sexy. 

It doesn’t help that he’s exhausted like he hasn’t been in years. The moment he even gets near his bed he’s going to pass out, which he feels probably isn’t very sexy either. It’s only the electric heat of Ronan’s lips and the way he’s tugging at Adam’s hair that’s keeping Adam awake. So Adam settles for being tucked away in a coal grey car underneath a coal grey morning sky, touching whatever he can reach and resisting the urge to just climb over the center console and into Ronan’s lap. One day he’s going to figure out why his body always seems to be working leagues ahead of his mind. 

Ronan slides his lips sideways. He kisses Adam’s cheek, his jaw, just under his ear, and then down his neck until he’s gently sucking at the skin near Adam’s collar bone. Adam lets out an unsteady exhale and slides the tips of his fingers down Ronan’s back and into the waistband of his jeans. Ronan tilts his hips like there’s anything there to meet them and half-hum/half-growls his frustration into Adam’s neck. Adam needs to go or he really is going to climb over the center console and into Ronan’s lap. 

“Thank you,” he says, and immediately regrets it. God, he’s such an idiot. 

“For what?” Ronan asks. He kisses his way back up Adam’s neck. When he reaches Adam’s lips he slips his tongue in between them and Adam bites back a frustrated hum of his own. Ronan’s voice is rough. He speaks directly into Adam’s open, gasping mouth. “I haven’t even done anything good yet.” 

Adam pulls away and licks his already wet lips. Ronan watches him do it, eyes dark and pupils blown. Adam doesn’t think anyone has ever looked at him with such naked desire before. Ronan Lynch, who Adam’s learned wants to spend time with so few people, wants to spend time with him. Wants to make time for him and touch him and be touched in return. It’s a realization that’s made all the more pleasant by how foreign it feels in Adam’s life. 

“No, I mean, thanks for the help with my project. And for coming to breakfast. And the ride home. And…” Adam trails off. He wonders if it’s too corny to say ‘thanks for making out with me in a car for twenty minutes like we’re still in high school, because I never actually got to do this in high school.’ He suspects it is. 

“Well damn, Parrish. I’ve got an image to maintain. Gotta make sure you do it justice.” 

Adam pushes at Ronan’s forehead with two fingers. “I told you not to call me that.” 

Ronan smirks and catches Adam’s wrist in his hand. He leans in to kiss Adam again, quick and close lipped. When he pulls away he lets Adam go. “Go upstairs before you pass out in my car. I’ll see you later.”

Adam slowly untangles his arms from Ronan’s clothing and reaches blindly for the door handle and his bag. It takes him a few tries to get both. “I’ll text you later,” he says. 

“Do me a favor and get seven solid hours of sleep first.”

“From what you’ve told me, you have never gotten seven solid hours of sleep in your life. This is a ridiculous double standard and I won’t stand for it.”

“I’m already a beauty,” Ronan says. It’s technically not wrong, but as an argument it doesn’t hold water. 

“Yeah, you’re something.” Adam leans forward and gives Ronan one last quick kiss before climbing out of the car and closing the door behind him. 

He stands on the sidewalk in front of the steps to his apartment and watches as Ronan pulls away, then he turns and contemplates the stone and steel stairwell. Three floors have never looked so mountainous before. Adam closes his eyes for a moment. He sways, feeling lightheaded, and sighs before starting the slow climb to his apartment. 

By the time he gets his key in the lock the last two and a half days are really catching up with him, his exhaustion snowballing now that he’s so close to sleep. He expects to be left alone, but instead he finds Blue standing between the living room and kitchen in a long, ripped up t-shirt and a very short pair of shorts. Her hair is sticking up at odd angles and her legs curve attractively into each other where she has them crossed at the ankles. She eyes him over the top of her coffee cup and blows into it lightly. 

“You’re back late.” 

“On the contrary,” he says, dropping his bag on the floor and holding up one, unsteady finger. He can’t tell if it’s wavering or the room is. “I’m back very early.” 

“I would buy that if I hadn’t last seen you three days ago.” 

Adam doesn’t respond. He walks past her and into bathroom, closing the door behind him. When he comes out again she’s standing between him and his bedroom. He looks at her through heavy lidded eyes. “You’re up early for someone who was at work at midnight last night.” 

“I left soon after,” she says. “Also, you’re welcome.” 

“Thanks,” he says. He means it. In spite of all of Blue’s talk about how Ronan and his friend annoy her, he knows she wouldn’t help Ronan if she didn’t like him. Or at least, if she didn’t like what he does for Adam. They’ve long ago come to terms with the fact that they have very different taste in people, considering their initial attraction to each other. “How did you know Tad would be there?” 

“Because Tad is a quite busy bee and you are made of nectar.” 

Adam grimaces. “That doesn’t make any sense.” 

“It does to Tad.” 

“Did he tell you that?”

“Not in those exact words.” She takes another sip of her coffee. “When do you have to be back to meet your professor?” 

Adam glances at his watch and then takes it off. “Four thirty?” 

“Cool, I get off at five. We can grab dinner together.” 

“Sounds great,” Adam says as he brushes past her and into his bedroom, because it does. 

He feels incredibly lucky to still have Blue with him. Even when they’re fighting she’s a constant for him. She’s the home he never had. It was what broke them up, initially. They were both far too young to be that for one another, and Blue already had a home full of women who loved and cared for her. She didn’t understand that Adam didn’t have that and never had. She didn’t understand that Adam wasn’t really sure what love was meant to look like and that he was fumbling, grasping for straws and trying to emulate what he saw around him. That was his first mistake. Blue has never wanted anything that could be commonly found around. Except apparently for him, because he’s always thought of himself as more common than even the dust they were raised in.

Somehow, against all odds, when they stopped wanting each other their connection stayed strong. It’s possible it became even stronger. They understood each other. She’s the only one who really knows what happened with his parents. She was the only one there for him when it did. She’s seen his eyes go hollow and his jaw go slack. She’s seen him so enraged that he tried to dismantle himself, and she’s still here, sharing his space and giving him shit. He’s a little worried that no one else will ever know him this well. It’s what every relationship he’s tried to have since her has lacked. Connection, understanding. 

Adam’s halfway out of his t-shirt when he has the idea. He turns around to go back into the living room and promptly trips over his shoes, which are in the middle of the floor where he kicked them off only seconds before. “Fuck, shit.” He sits up and strips out of his t-shirt the rest of the way. 

Blue peeks into his room to find him sitting in the middle of his floor, half-naked and throwing his shoes toward the closet. “You alright in here?” 

“I need help,” he says. 

“I’ve been telling you that for years.” She draws out the word ‘years’ so that it has at least two syllables and some sort of sarcasm punctuation he’s not familiar with. 

He runs a hand over his face and makes no move to stand. “No, with Ronan. I mean, for Ronan. I want to make a thing for Ronan.” 

“Okay,” she says slowly. “But you really need to get some sleep first.”

“I will, I just. I think you should ask his friend if he can help us.” 

“No,” she says. “I thought you didn’t want me talking to his friend anyway.” 

“I said I didn’t want you pitying him. You shouldn’t act like you like him unless you like him. That’s the problem. Ronan said he likes me. Like, he really likes me. But he said it in another language and I’m not supposed to know and I don’t know how to tell him that I do know, except I think I have it now.” 

“Another language?” Blue says. “Why? You know what, I don’t want to know. You’re not making any sense. Go to sleep. Then if you’re still having this brilliant idea we’ll talk about it.”

“It is brilliant,” Adam insists. He stretches out on the floor and presses his cheek to the rough carpet. It’s so comfortable to finally not be standing up anymore. “I’m going to make him art, so he can get to know me. Like you know me.” 

“I thought you were already making him art.” 

Adam raises his hand and drops it back onto the carpet in a very poor attempt at a dismissive wave. “That’s of him, not for him.”

Blue comes in and walks around Adam. He blinks at the pink pom poms on the tops of her socks. “I think if he has his way,” she says. “He’ll know you way better than I ever did. Come on.” She loops her hands around one of Adam’s arms and rolls him onto his back. 

“No one will ever know me better than you,” he tells her. “You’ve seen all of it.”

“I meant like, biblically.” She grabs his shoulders and forces him to sit up. “Onto the bed, or you’ll have that horrid pattern all over your cheek and your back will hate you.” 

Adam climbs onto his bed. He’s still in his jeans, but he’s past caring. Blue pulls the sheets up to his chest and runs her hand through his hair. “Go to sleep, asshole. I’ll set your alarm.” 

“Promise me you’ll ask his friend for help,” he says. 

“I promise if I see his friend I’ll put his correct name on his cup and everything.” 

Adam closes his eyes. That’s good enough for him. The mattress shifts as she stands. He hears her fiddle about with the alarm on his dresser. 

“Where did these blue rocks come from?” she asks.

“Ronan,” he mumbles into his pillow. “They’re eyes for the sculpture. Ronan’s.” 

There’s a long moment of quiet before Blue hums in thought. “I think you’re wrong about that. They might be from Ronan, but they’re definitely yours. Believe me, I’ve spent a lot of my life looking into your stupid, pretty eyes.” 

Adam tries to think about this, but he can’t make his mind stick to anything. He hears the door to his room close as she slips out and finally succumbs to sleep not long after.


	9. Chapter 9

It’s been a weird week. Ronan has been able to take things out of his dreams since he was a child. He’s been looking for a dead king with Gansey since they were fifteen. And still, this is the week that stands out to him as the weirdest in recent history. It started Monday when Blue not only wrote Gansey’s name on his cup correctly, but also put her phone number underneath it, and then just spun out from there. 

Between the Blue development and finals, Ronan hasn’t seen Gansey for more than an hour collectively all week. It’s not that he doesn’t think Gansey can’t handle his embarrassing self, it's just that he thinks Blue might eat him alive. Not only would that relieve him of his best friend, an idea he’s not overly fond of, it would probably hamper his relationship with Adam. He thinks. He doubts there’s a social protocol in place for when one member of a couple’s best friend murders and stews the other’s. Maybe if he looks in one of Gansey’s old books he’ll find something. 

In the meantime, the four of them are meant to be going out for pizza together, so Gansey should be safe for the night. He’s taking Blue from campus, which is why Ronan is currently standing on the landing outside of Blue and Adam’s apartment freezing his balls off and waiting for Adam to come to the door. He hopes Adam hasn’t forgotten. It’s been a busy week for him as well, with finals of his own and needing to finish off the sculpture. Ronan’s a little worried Adam’s forgotten. He pounds on the door again.

When Adam opens the door the apartment behind him is mostly dark. The low, flickering orange light bouncing off the walls behind him reminds Ronan of the nights he used to spend in the sanctuary of his church back home, drunk and angry and not quite repentant. Adam’s barefoot, wearing jeans and a blue hoodie, zipped up to his chest. The light from the outer hall is bright compared to the apartment behind him and it casts shadows onto Adam’s cheeks and neck from the hood, which is draped loosely over his damp hair. 

He reminds Ronan of a statue he grew up with and again Ronan is thinking of Pygmalion. What could Adam bring to life if he had Ronan’s power? What has Adam brought to life in Ronan himself?

“You don’t look dressed for dinner,” he says. 

Adam holds the door frame on either side of him and leans out to kiss Ronan, quick and chaste. “About that. There’s been a small change of plans.” 

“As in there’s been an actual change of plans or as in, you were all lying to me this whole time?”

“You can’t tell me you really wanted to sit through a whole dinner with Blue.”

Ronan shrugs. “She’s grown on me.” 

“She does that. I still wish Gansey luck.”

“If they’re alone together he’s going to need it.” 

Adam hums in agreement. He looks Ronan up and down. “I have a confession,” he says.

“Well hell, if you want to go to confession I know where all the Catholic churches are in the city.” He does. Not because he was planning on going regularly without his brothers, but for emergencies. He’d been uneasy when he moved away from home and catalogued them in the same way a nervous person catalogues exits and alarm pulls in a crowded theater. In case of spiritual crisis, break glass.

“Somehow I don’t think they accept the godless.” 

“At least you’re not protestant,” Ronan says, voice low and serious. 

Adam grins at him. He grabs Ronan’s hand and tugs. “Come in.” 

Ronan lets himself be pulled inside. The door slams shut behind him. It takes a moment for his eyes to adjust to the light. He follows Adam around the short wall of the small entryway. The layout of the apartment is common. There’s a small living/dining area and to his right there’s a tight kitchen with a U of counter space. The decoration is not common. Not even, he suspects, for art majors. The counters and dining table are all covered in differently shaped boxes surrounded by votive candles. 

“I can’t tell if this is meant to be romantic or creepy, but either way it’s a fucking fire hazard.” 

“Story of my life,” Adam says. 

Ronan doesn’t know what to say to that, and when he doesn’t respond Adam says, “No, seriously, look.” He sweeps his hand to indicate the table and kitchen. Ronan frowns at him, confused, but he does as he’s told. 

The boxes, he realizes upon closer inspection, are dioramas. There are twelve of them in all. The candles set around them give the display a sense that the figures inside are moving, like Ronan is watching something dynamic play out. Through cardboard and paint and what appear to be wallpaper samples the boxes tell the story of a paper thin boy who grew up in a small trailer in a green valley, but who didn’t seem to believe that life, that greenery, was for him. Whenever it appears in the scenes it appears out windows or off to the side, always shrinking away from a hulking giant of a man made of thicker material than the boy.

Even without the separate trappings and the boxes around them, Ronan can tell that there’s a steady progression in the paper Adam. He starts out huddled in a corner, playing with something that might be a Transformer, and finishes it standing tall with a straight back, reaching toward a small, green replica of the gold tree in the Visual Arts Building. In one of the scenes dirt and rocks and tendrils of green are pouring into a room that could be a church or a courtroom, he can’t tell the difference, and burying the thick man. In the boxes after that the boy is alone, or with a small paper thin girl he assumes is Blue. 

None of this feels like a confession to Ronan, it feels like a promise. The only other person who’s ever trusted him with this much of them is Gansey. He’s lost, suddenly, unprepared to handle this much at once. It’s what he wants, but it’s not at all what he expected to get. For a few seconds he forgets to breathe altogether. When he remembers he inhales deep and let’s out a long, slow exhale, trying to figure out what he’s supposed to say.

He doesn’t come up with anything. Saying things has never been his strong suit. He settles for chastising, which is almost like care. “This looks like it took a lot of work, man. Weren’t you just up for three days straight? You don’t have enough work to do?” 

Ronan is standing in a corner of the kitchen, having followed the boxes around the counter space. Adam is behind him, leaning against the wall at the entrance to the small space. He shrugs. 

“I had help.” 

“So that’s where Gansey’s been all week.” 

“You have a good friend there, Ronan.” 

“I know,” Ronan says. He doesn’t need to be told how lucky he is to have Gansey. It’s a truth that plays out every day. 

Adam is eyeing him anxiously, unable to keep his hands still. He stuffs them in the pockets of his jeans, then into the pockets on his hoodie, then he grabs the back of his head and crosses his fingers behind it. 

“Is this your confession?” 

“Yes and no,” Adam says. He shoves his hands back into his hoodie. “Yes, this is a confession, because I thought it would be important for you to know me. You know, like for real.”

“And no?” Ronan raises an eyebrow. He crosses his arms and leans his hip against the counter, careful to avoid both dioramas and candles. 

“And no, because the real confession is that I know Latin. Or well, some, enough to basically know what you said the other night.” He ducks his head immediately as if waiting to be scolded. 

Ronan looks at the box with the large man buried in dirt between the pews and something in his stomach flips over. He knew already. Adam told him at the beginning that he had trouble with his parents, but having the context now, putting it together with the way Adam jumps at loud sounds and constantly waits to be shut down and tenses when he’s touched if he isn't expecting it, is too much. Ronan is simmering. 

There’s another anger under that, one that’s just dressed up embarrassment. One that’s telling him he’s an idiot for saying anything, that it’s too soon, that he’s too much, always too much. That one is easy enough to quell, because Adam heard him and didn’t run away. He’s right here, glowing golden in the dancing candlelight and looking at him like he’s the one who’s afraid of being let go. 

This is not the place for his anger. He shoves it down and plucks the tall, proud Adam out of the last box. “So this it.” 

“You told me in another language,” Adam says. “I'm telling you in another language. This is my other language.”

“This and Latin.”

Adam looks up at him, braver now that Ronan’s not shutting him down. “And two semesters of German, but we don't talk about that.” 

“Ja,” Ronan drawls. He pushes away from the counter and holds the little paper Adam up at arm’s length between him and the real Adam’s face. “I’m guessing Gansey told you I’m not good with...” 

He doesn’t know what he wants to say. Not good with casual relationships? Not good with feelings? Not good with people? Not good with boys who move into his head and rearrange the furniture? Not good with communication outside of vague gestures? 

He gestures between them vaguely with his free hand. 

“He may have mentioned it, but I guessed as much before. It’s why I did this.” 

“When?”

Adam reaches out and plucks the small paper Adam from Ronan’s fingers. He lays it on the counter behind him and crowds into Ronan’s space, looping his arms around Ronan’s neck and leaning in so that their foreheads are touching. “When you tried to kiss me, by the river. You told me that thing about your family, you seemed to be waiting for something back, but I don’t talk about that, I can’t. It’s why I, it’s why.”

“You don’t have to,” Ronan says. “You don’t have to tell me anything. It’s who you are _now_ that matters.” This does come out angry, but he can’t help it. This growing certainty is making him itch all along his veins where he can’t scratch.

“No,” Adam says. He shakes his head and the shadows seesaw across his face. “I’m sick of feeling alone, like no one can understand me. I’m sick of feeling like only Blue will ever know me when Blue doesn’t want me. You want me. I want to give you me.” He pulls Ronan into a tight hug and buries his face in the crook of Ronan’s neck. 

Ronan wraps his arms around Adam in response. They stand that way for several minutes, holding each other in the middle of Adam’s tiny kitchen. It’s maybe the most intimate thing Ronan’s ever done, which is really saying something considering Gansey’s typically romantic and effusive form of friendship.

After some time, Adam’s arms loosen around Ronan’s neck. He pulls back and looks Ronan in the eye, lips straight and thin, face solemn in the candlelight. He doesn’t break eye contact as he slides his hands back over Ronan’s shoulders and down his chest until he can get them inside of Ronan’s jacket. Then, slowly and deliberately, he pushes the jacket back off Ronan’s shoulders. Ronan lets go of Adam so he can wriggle out of the arms and let it fall to the tiled floor. 

For a second, time snags. Ronan can feel the possibility in this moment just as palpably as he can feel the possibility in his dreams. It’s the kind of moment he can take from. The kind of moment that splinters reality, a thousand different universes and decisions jutting away from what he does next and he can only ever live in one of them. It’s always felt like just as much of a waste as a boon. There’s so much living he will never do. 

In that moment he knows, really and truly for the first time, that he wants that living. If this is what the future looks like—determined and passionate and unafraid—he wants the future. He wants Adam in his future. Ronan looks at Adam. Adam looks back. Ronan runs his mind across a hundred of those different threads of possible time and he plucks one out, holds it close, decides to make it real. He unzips Adam’s hoodie.

Adam is pulling out of the hoodie before Ronan even lets go of the zipper. He drops it onto the floor and reaches for Ronan. Adam’s hands slip up under Ronan’s shirt and his lips land rough at the corner of Ronan’s lips. “Amoenissimus es,” he says, breath hot on Ronan’s cheek. “I don’t hate it. There’s nothing to hate.” 

Ronan cups Adam’s jaw in his hands and pushes forward until Adam’s back hits the fridge. This kiss is a searing, messy slide of lips and tongues. It’s wild and triumphant. Adam’s fingers pace up and down Ronan’s back before finally settling at his hips. He traces light spirals across the skin there before sliding his hands down into the back pockets of Ronan’s jeans and pulling him in as close as they can get. 

Adam lets out a quiet gasp. He’s looking at Ronan with wide eyes, like he can’t believe all of this is happening. Ronan’s not sure he believes it either. Adam drapes a hand on Ronan’s head and pulls it back, baring his throat so Adam can nudge along the underside of Ronan’s jaw with his nose and lips. The tug of it snaps something in Ronan and he is suddenly overwhelmed with all of it: the heat from Adam’s skin, the frantic beat of his heart, the warm breath on Ronan’s neck, the uneven rise and fall of Adam’s chest, the tilt of his hips. He feels dizzyingly alive in a way he hasn’t in quite a while.

“You’re gonna burn the place down,” he says, as Adam pushes his shirt up again. _You’re gonna burn me down._

“It would be thematic.” Adam slides his hands down to Ronan’s hips and pushes him back a step. “But inconvenient too, probably.” He steps out of the kitchen and blows out the candles sitting on the table.

Ronan blows out the candles scattered along the counter and then they’re standing ten feet apart in the pale semi-darkness. His pulse is still racing, but he can’t bring himself to step forward. He gets caught there, just looking at Adam’s face bathed in the ambient blue light from the parking lot outside the windows. Adam pulls his t-shirt over his head and drops it on the floor at his feet. 

Ronan knows that this is a gift that comes with a price for Adam. That he’s serious about giving himself to Ronan because he has to be, because he doesn’t trust many people and he feels like he’s relinquishing something he may not get back. Ronan doesn’t want to take anything from Adam. He doesn’t know what he has to give in return. 

“I’ve never,” he says, because honesty is always a good place to start. 

Adam shakes his head. “Me either. It doesn’t need to be that now. I just need—”

Ronan doesn’t wait for him to explain. He doesn’t need him to. He closes the space between them and kisses Adam. He runs his hands up Adam’s sides and across his back, reveling in the feel of so much skin and of the strength beneath it. The strength that kept Adam moving forward when he thought it was pointless, that brought him here to this place and Ronan’s worshipping hands. 

On occasions when Ronan is having moments of incredible hubris, he thinks that the world sometimes works toward his favor. This is one of those times. It was a long game, but it’s been worth the wait. 

Adam walks them back until Ronan’s legs hit the couch and he falls onto it with a small bounce. Adam curls up next to him and slides his hands up under Ronan’s shirt, picking back up where he’d left off. Ronan obliges him by just pulling it off and tossing it over the back of the sofa. He watches Adam catalogue everything about him. His eyes sweep across Ronan’s skin, his fingers dance at the edges of his tattoo and then run down his arms.

He frowns and rubs his thumbs over the insides of Ronan’s forearms. “You have scars. I didn’t see them before.” 

“So do you,” Ronan says. He drags his fingers across a jagged line along Adam’s rib cage. “Who doesn’t?”

“Most people, as far as I can tell.” 

“Have you undressed many people?” Ronan asks, because he’s a glutton for punishment. When Adam doesn’t answer he says, “Just because you can’t see them doesn’t mean they’re not there.” 

Adam nods as if this sounds sensible. He traces circles over the insides of Ronan’s wrists, and then he brings them to his lips and kisses each of them. He kisses his way up Ronan’s arm and across his shoulder. He drags his lips up Ronan’s neck and down his jaw. Ronan responds by reaching back and trying to tangle himself up in Adam, to get as close as he can and feel as much as he can. To make sure Adam knows he’s going to give back. They’re in this together. 

Time slips away as they sit together, kissing slowly and gently mapping the dips and curves of each other’s bodies. Adam doesn’t push and Ronan doesn’t pry. It’s not about where they’re going. It’s about where they are. But eventually, they have to go somewhere, because spending the whole night leaning into the stiff back of the couch seems like a terrible plan. 

Adam yawns into Ronan’s neck and Ronan digs a finger into his side. “Come on, asshole. You need to go to bed.” 

“Don’t wanna,” Adam says, squirming away. “I don’t want you to leave.” 

Ronan brushes Adam’s hair away from his face and kisses his forehead. His lips feel chapped. They tingle like they’re waking up from being numb. “I don’t have to leave.” 

Adam looks at him for a long moment, then gives a small nod as he makes up his mind. “Okay. Come on. My room’s the first door on the left.” 

“And straight on til morning,” Ronan says. 

Adam shoves Ronan in response, but he’s smiling as he does it. They untangle themselves and crawl off the couch. Ronan’s right leg fell asleep some time ago, so he has to shake it out and half hop along behind Adam. He feels like this is probably the least sexy thing a person can do, but Adam doesn’t mind it. He doesn’t even make fun of him for it, which Ronan thinks is a testament to how tired he is. 

Adam’s room is small and neat and darker than the living room, since its one window is along the side of the building. There’s still enough light for Ronan to be able to appreciate the pale, sharp lines of him as he climbs out of his jeans and tosses them toward the closet. Ronan takes that as a cue and kicks off his boots to slide out of his as well. Adam all but collapses onto the mattress and it groans in response. 

Ronan lies down next to him on top of the comforter. He’s only in boxer briefs and socks, but he still feels warm from Adam’s hands and Adam’s breath. It will be a while, he thinks, before he’s calm enough to feel cool again. Adam rolls so that he’s facing him and offers him half of his pillow. Ronan accepts the corner of it and rests his head on his arm. 

“Don’t go all timid on me now,” Adam says, voice slow with his sleepiness. He pokes and prods until Ronan slides under the covers. Then he presses up against him from their chests to their feet and slides one of his legs between Ronan’s calves. He rests his head against Ronan’s shoulder, snakes his arms around his chest and holds him close. 

Ronan’s shared beds with people before, but never with someone he wanted. It was always his brothers on family vacations or Gansey when they were camping. He has never lay against someone and catalogued every part of them. He hasn’t felt the pull of tangled leg hairs and warm hands spread wide across his lower back and the press of someone else’s dick against his thigh. He yearns for more, for roughness and tongues and teeth. He wants to roll onto his back and pull Adam on top of him and see what it feels like to have someone else’s weight press him into the mattress. To see if it feels anything like when he dreams it. 

But right now, more than anything, he wants to keep feeling the tickle of Adam’s shallow breath across his chest. He wants to wake up first in the morning and kiss Adam awake after. He knows that there will be time to worry about the rest later. He knows it like he knows the sun is going to rise tomorrow, because it always does. He knows that Adam doesn’t give of himself lightly. He knows that he himself doesn’t accept people lightly. He knows that their pride will get in the way and they’ll fight sometimes. He knows that neither of them are easy. He also knows that neither of them wants easy. They want real. They want someone who can look at the messiness of them and say ‘hey, me too’, instead of shying away. 

Ronan knows, just like he knows his own pulse, that they’ve found it.


	10. Chapter 10

The art gallery on campus is a maze of rooms painted stark white. Adam’s installed his sculpture in the final room, because it’s the one with the highest ceiling. He’s also been avoiding the final room since the gallery opened for viewing for the day. He knows he got a passing—superlative even—grade, he doesn’t feel like he needs everyone else’s commentary on top of it. 

It’s not like Adam to be precious about his art. He doesn’t make it for other people, he makes it for himself. He makes it because if he doesn’t he feels like the terrible things swirling inside of him will swallow him whole. But he also knows that if he wants to do this for real, if he wants to make the stable life he always dreamed of as a child, that he needs to make other people see the value in it too. 

He thinks that’s probably why all of the art majors have to man the gallery sometimes, to drive this point home. It tires him. At least it’s the last official day of the semester and most people are packing instead of wandering around campus looking for something to do. The gallery has been busier than usual as students bring in their friends to see their projects on display, but for the most part they don’t wander curiously. 

Adam has thirty minutes left to go in his shift when Ronan shows up with a bag of sandwiches and cans of soda. Ronan is still something of a wonder to Adam, in spite of all that’s happened over the last month. No amount of looking at him or deconstructing him has proven him to be ordinary or plain. He’s still just as sharp and dark as he was that first day. There are still mysteries in him waiting to be uncovered. He still makes something in Adam’s gut flutter with nerves, but pleasantly. As if to say, I can’t believe this is for me.

“You didn’t need to bring me lunch,” he says, pulling the bag from Ronan’s hand and kissing him, short and quick on the lips. 

Ronan leans into it and runs his fingers down Adam’s cheek. They linger there for a few seconds after he pulls away. “That’s not lunch. That’s bribery. I want to see this thing.” 

“You’ve seen it already.” Adam opens the bag to find there are french fries in it too. He steals a few and shoves them in his mouth. 

Ronan scoffs. “I’ve seen it in progress. I want to see the whole thing.” 

“You can see the whole thing whenever you want. You do have a mirror at your place, right?” He closes the bag back up to try and keep everything warm until he can leave. Ronan gives him an unimpressed look and wanders further into the gallery. He stops to take in a collection of rusted out car parts cut into delicate filigree.

Adam sighs and drops the food on the desk. He goes after Ronan and snags his elbow, tugging him away. “Come on, let’s get this over with.” 

He makes his way through the maze with Ronan on his heels. The final room is as cluttered with things as the first several, but it’s a wider, more open space. Adam’s sculpture is installed in the back corner. His professor wanted to place it in the center of the room, so it was the first thing to catch someone’s eye when they walked into the room, but that had been antithesis to the point of the thing for Adam. 

Adam as a person doesn’t want to draw attention. He’s spent his whole life avoiding it. He still chafes at it some days when people are looking at him. He doesn’t know how to handle or direct attention properly. What Adam knows is about disappointing his father, about chomping at the bit in the reins his family wants to put on him, about the anger that skulks in the dark and waits for a moment to be set free. Adam wanted his Satan to sit in a dark corner alone because that’s what will earn him his wings. That’s what will make escape seem necessary and inevitable. That’s the point of the thing. 

That’s also why he’s nervous about Ronan seeing it. It had been one thing to mock up his past for Ronan. That is already decided. He’s here now and all of that other is still a part of him, still drives him, but it’s not the same as when he was in it. He no longer wakes up afraid. He no longer wants to leave so bad it makes him sick to his stomach. But this, this Satan with Ronan’s form, is who he is now: still finding his feet and threading his feathers.

They approach the sculpture and Adam hangs back. Ronan steps right up to it and ghosts his hand over its grey beaded face. The final posture has changed a bit. Now instead of sitting tall on his knees, proud and defiant in his exile, he’s more of a slumped z, like his strings have been cut. The cloth meant to be draped about his waist is rendered in black beads, but because of the way the lines are hung you can see the grey from the inside of him peeking through. It almost looks like the fabric is being torn away. Adam thinks he’ll make that more purposeful when he revises it. 

The sculpture has a fist near his mouth. He’s chewing at one of his wrists, which is a thing Adam had seen Ronan do and immediately decided to steal. Though, without the leather bands it looks like he’s picking into his own veins. It’s not far from the truth of things. The feathers were the last thing Adam added. Great wings made of tiny puffs of fragile black down. They look like a dark swarm erupting from the sculpture’s back, not at all sleek and powerful, but intimidating and malevolent. True freedom is always a frightening thing. 

“The eyes,” Ronan says. He’s dropped to his knees in front of the sculpture so that he can be face to face with it. The blue stones Ronan gave Adam are looking out from the bowed face, the only hopeful color amid the splashes of grey and black.

“Yeah,” Adam says. “I know you said they weren’t meant for that, but I felt like I should put a part of you in there. You’re just as much a part of it as I am.” 

Ronan cranes his head around to look at him. “They’re not mine, I told you.”

Adam wraps his hands around his waist. “I know. Blue saw it immediately, that they’re more like my eyes. But it still seemed appropriate. Me looking out from this thing that I wanted to divorce myself from.”

“Why would you want to divorce yourself from it? It’s beautiful.” 

Adam knows that Ronan wouldn’t lie to him to spare his feelings, so hearing this from him is somehow better than hearing it from anyone else who has seen the sculpture so far. “You’re beautiful,” he corrects him. “I just translated what I saw.” 

“The slope of my shoulders,” he says, remembering. Ronan pushes himself up and returns to stand next to Adam and look at it from there. 

“It’s possible they’re still telling me to fuck myself,” Adam muses.

“No,” Ronan says. “They say that to everyone. It’s not personal.”

Adam turns to go back to the desk so they can collect their sandwiches. “It is personal now, isn’t it?” 

Ronan reaches out and grabs him by the hip, drags him back until he’s pressed against Ronan’s chest. Ronan wraps his arms around Adam and kisses his shoulders and the sides of his neck before spinning him around and catching his lips. “You made it personal,” he murmurs against them. It feels like he wants to say ‘thank you.’

Adam wants to say ‘you’re welcome’ back, but he settles for doing it with his lips and tongue and hands instead of his voice. He has thanks of his own to give. He has never felt so like he could fly as when Ronan is looking at him and expecting great things to come from him. They can’t fix themselves, but they can do this for each other and that, Adam thinks, is a fine art all its own.

**Author's Note:**

> Artists whose work is meant to be referenced in the descriptions of other student art are: [Joe Webb](http://www.joewebbart.com/), [Glen Tarnowski](http://www.tarnowskiart.com/Paintings_c_74.html), and [Cal Lane](http://www.callane.com/works.html#). There's also a real life equivalent for the audio installation Ronan listens to. It's a piece that was on tour with the "[When the Stars Begin to Fall](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/18/arts/design/when-the-stars-begin-to-fall-at-studio-museum-in-harlem.html?_r=0)" exhibit, which I saw when it came to the ICA here in Boston. I have not been able to find the artist or name of the work online, though, so until I do it will just live on as described. 
> 
> I have a [Tumblr](http://charmingpplincardigans.tumblr.com/)! Let's talk about art and feathers and feelings!


End file.
